Search for Hughie Fury’s next opponent continues

By Boxing News - 02/13/2016 - Comments

fury433By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten heavyweight prospect Hughie Fury (18-0, 10 KOs) and his team have yet to find an opponent for his March 26th fight on the undercard if the Nick Blackwell vs. Chris Eubank Jr. fight card at the Wembley Arena in London, UK.

According to Hughie’s promoters at Hennessy Sports, he will be fighting a 12 round fight against a top ranked world contender. Hughie’s trainer/father Peter Fury says they had an opponent in mind for the fight, but after he initially agreed to a fee, he raised his asking price by three times.

It appears that Team Hughie will need to look in another direction for his next opponent unless this fighter is willing to come down in his asking price.

Hughie is the cousin of unbeaten IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Tyson Fury. Like Tyson, Hughie is tall, rangy, and slow and lacks punching power. Adding power to Hughie’s game is necessary if he wants to go anywhere in the heavyweight division, because he is not tall enough to stand back on the outside and dominate his shorter opponents the way that Tyson Fury does. Hughie is going to need to find some power or else he’s going to be stuck as another one of the many limited tall heavyweights in the division.

In Hughie’s last four fights, he has beaten Larry Olubamiwo, Emilio Ezequiel Zarate, George Arias, and Andriy Rudenko. By far, Rudenko is the best of the bunch, and it is surprising that Hughie has been going backwards since beating Rudenko in February of last year.

It would seem logical for Hughie to keep improving with each fight by taking on better fighters each time, but that is not what he has been doing. He has been fighting steadily worse opposition in his last three fights. Of course, that could be due to Team Hughie’s problems finding available opponents willing to fight him.

There are many decent contenders in the heavyweight division that might agree to fight Hughie. However, they are probably not too excited about taking the fight on a little over a month’s notice, and they might not like fighting in the UK in front of a hostile audience.

Just by having the Fury last name, it probably makes it a lot more difficult for Hughie to get guys to agree to fight him unless they get a good payday. Fighters likely expect to receive a good payday if they are fighting a Fury.

Hughie needs to step it up at some point and start fighting better opposition, because I do not think he is getting anything from fighting the guys that he’s been facing lately. It is all one-way traffic for Hughie nowadays in his mismatches, and I think it is a huge waste of time.



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