By Scott Gilfoid: IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (25-0, 19 KOs) hasn’t put much of a dent in the close to 60 pounds he needs to burn off before he gets down to his target weight for his rematch against Wladimir Klitschko (64-4, 53 KOs) in less than two months on July 9 at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK.
According to Sky Sports, Fury still has 44lbs to go, and he’s having problems in both his sparring and with his trainer Peter Fury. It seems the 27-year-old Tyson Fury was royally worked over in sparring on Tuesday in getting knocked down several times by a light heavyweight from Belgium.
Naturally, Peter wasn’t too happy about it and he reportedly let Fury know about it and walked out.
“Me and Peter have had a bit of a fall-out over the sparring,” said Fury to skysports.com. “He said to me, ‘If you’re getting knocked over by light-heavyweights, what’s Klitschko going to do?’. He’s left for a couple of days but I am not sure if he’s coming back if I’m honest.”
Well, I’m not sure if it really matters who trains Fury at this point. If he’s not going to be able to get the motivation going to burn off the 44lbs of blubber that he’s still carrying around, I don’t know that it really matters who’s in control of the rudder of the Fury ship. I think he’s heading for a major ship-sinking iceberg right now on July 9, and it pretty much doesn’t matter who is the captain of the ship right now.
Fury is heading towards deep trouble in my view in facing a very motivated and in shape 6’6” Wladimir and I see this one ending badly for Fury. The problem isn’t that Fury is getting knocked around the ring by light heavyweights. The problem is he put on so much weight after his narrow win over Wladimir from last November. Fury has had a sedentary lifestyle since then and has been eating well. You’re not going to be able to burn off 60lbs of pure blubber in two months without weakening yourself in a major way.
Yeah, I think Fury can burn through the blubber in that time, but I don’t think he’ll be fit to fight a world class fighter when the weight is off. I’ve seen people lose that kind of weight in two months, and they look weak with skin hanging off of them and older looking. I’m not sure what it is but it seems to me that when people lose a lot of weight in a short period of time, they look older after it’s off rather than younger.
It’s got to be incredibly hard on the body to take that kind of weight off in a short period of time, which is why Fury should have asked for more time to reduce his waistline before fighting Wladimir again. If it were me, I would have asked for seven months so that I could take the weight off the right way. Personally, if I took off 60 pounds in two months, I’d be too weak to fight anybody, least of all an aging talent like Wladimir.
“He was talking sense really but I can’t do much about getting knocked over and if he’s not happy about it, I’ve got to adopt a new trainer. If he doesn’t want to come back then I have to get someone else in,” said Fury. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me at the moment, I am just not performing.”
I think I have an idea of what’s wrong with Fury besides him being 40+lbs overweight. He made a ton of money in his fight against Wladimir last November, and he’s about to make a ton more. The kind of money that Fury has made, he can probably do whatever he wants, buy pretty much whatever he wants, eat what he wants and go wherever he wants. When you suddenly have a ton of money at your disposal, it can create distractions because you have a lot of things you can do with your free time.
I think Fury needs to get back to the simple life by living in a small place, and living in frugal manner without distractions like food, television, cars and whatnot. If Fury lived like a primitive, I think he would be able to train hard. He probably needs a place like Big Bear to train at where there’s nothing to do but train. Fury could then shutout everything else but his training camp. We’re talking no television, radios or nothing; just pure training.
I would hope for Fury’s sake that he has someone that is watching what he puts down his gullet to make sure that no pies, cakes, ice cream and candy is getting shoved down there. The last thing that Fury needs right now is for him to be pigging out like it’s going out of style. Fury has got a lot of flab to burn off in a short period of time to get ready for the rematch.
I’m not sure that Fury is going to be able to do it in the two months that remaining in training camp. It’s also a given that Fury will be walking into the ring carrying around some extra baggage around his waist. But it might not matter. Look at Tony Thompson. His weight when up to the 260s, and he was still able to beat David Price twice as well as Odlanier Solis. If Wladimir fights like a timid rabbit in the rematch like he did in their previous fight last November, Fury could win no matter how fat he is on July 9.
Simply by pawing at the air font of him constantly, Fury could scare Wladimir off and cause him not to throw any punches. Wladimir looked so messed up from Fury’s waiting his left hand in the air all night long. Wladimir would get set to throw a punch and then hit the reset while waiting for Fury to stop pawing at the air. It was comical but so, so sad as well. All Wladimir had to do was commit to a right hand, but he wouldn’t do it. He looked he was afraid to throw a right hand and then get countered if/when he missed with it.
“Peter said to me, ‘If your mind isn’t 100 per cent on it, you don’t want to be in there and are just in it for money’. He said he wants no part of it ‘because I don’t train losers’,” said Fury.
Peter has a hard job ahead of him if he does come back to training camp. He’s got to oversee both training and the fat farm in helping Fury burn flab off while at the same time try to work on his boxing training. It’s not easy when you’ve got a fighter as fat as Fury. That’s why they should have pushed to have seven months to prepare for the Wladimir rematch because Fury needed a good five months to burn the lard off and then another two months to do the actual training.