By Scott Gilfoid: IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) has put a big dent on burning off his huge pot belly that he came into training camp with five weeks ago. Fury, 27, still has a lot of fat he needs to burn off before his rematch against Wladimir Klitschko (64-4, 53 KOs) on July 9 at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK.
Fury says he is expecting Wladimir to throw many more punches in the rematch, and be a different fighter than he was the last time they faced each other in November of last year. Fury says Wladimir has no other choice but to fight differently than he did last time.
I think that kind of goes without saying though, because Wladimir wasn’t even fighting. He was just walking around the ring looking confused. It’s not hard to improve on what Wladimir did the last time he fought because he looked so utterly clueless in the ring. Fury says he’s going to have a different fight strategy for this one.
Just what that fight strategy will be is anyone’s guess. I mean, Fury can’t stand in the pocket because he’ll get blown out. He doesn’t have the chin or the power to stand in front of Wladimir all night long. Fury has to move and move constantly for him to keep from getting knocked out by Klitschko because he doesn’t have the chin or the power to stand up to the 40-year-old Ukrainian.
“It will be a different fight in Manchester,” said Fury to the Dailymail.co.uk about his rematch against Klitschko. “Klitschko will have to try something different and I must change to be ready for him. I’m trimming fat but adding muscle,’ he explains. ‘It’s a balancing act. I can’t go under 10 per cent body fat or I’ll feel the punches.”
As much as I want to believe that Fury will come into the fight with a different game plan this time around for Wladimir, I just can’t see it.
Here are the reasons why Fury cannot change his original and spoiling game plan from last time:
1. Fury is too hittable when he stands in the pocket.
2. Wladimir is just way too strong for the light hitting Fury.
3. Fury’s punching power is inadequate to stand and fight in a traditional fight. He must run or else he’ll get brained and bad.
4. Wladimir is too fast for Fury if they both stand and trade.
5. Fury’s slapping punches won’t keep Wladimir off him this time. Wladimir will walk through those pitty pat shots to give Fury a royal pounding he won’t soon forget.
6. Fury tends to get hurt by shots thrown with moderate power. Wladimir throws punches with major power. Wladimir didn’t realize how much he had going for him in the first fight against Fury. If he just let his hands go, he would put Fury on the canvas in short order and it would have been academic. Fury would have been laid out and the fight would have had to have been stopped on the spot without a count.
“I’m bigger on the chest and arms than I’ve ever been. But I’ll still be able to move despite being half a stone heavier than last time, at just under 18 stone,” said Fury. “I can go from being a fat pig on the booze to feeling really fit. Go from champagne, vodka, beer and lobster to winning a world title.”
I really don’t think it matters how much muscle Fury puts on his upper body. It’s not going to translate to more punching power. Having more muscle doesn’t mean you’ll punch with more power, because if that was the case, then Anthony Joshua would be a better puncher than when he was weighing 220lbs back in 2009. If you look at Joshua from 2009 and compare him to his present form in 2016, his power hasn’t improved at all.
The only thing that’s changed is he’s become a lot slower than he was back then, and less mobile That obviously is not good because he’s going to need to be faster and more mobile when he stops facing stiffs and starts taking on the talents like Deontay Wilder, Luis “The Real Kong Kong” Ortiz.
Joshua is getting by right now with a body that isn’t fine-tuned for the heavyweight division. Joshua’s body is more fine-tuned for a nice hot beat in Southern California. What Fury is doing is repeating the same mistakes that Joshua has been making by putting on useless muscle thinking it will mean more punching power. No way. It doesn’t work that way.
If anything, Fury will be weaker with the extra muscle he’s put on because he’ll tired quicker and those heavy muscles will cause the rest of his muscles to tire out as well as his heart, which will need to pump blood to all that muscle. Fury is putting on muscle at the wrong time because he’s going to have all this new muscle at the wrong time going into a difficult fight against a guy that is still dangerous in Wladimir.
This is the wrong time for Fury to be packing on lot of experimental muscle. If a fighter is going to pack on muscle, he needs to do that for fights against lower level fodder opponents so that he can try out the muscle in a number of fights against non-threatening opponents before using the muscle against a good opponent.
If the muscle turns out to be a problem for him, then Fury could burn the useless muscle off and get lean. But by going into a fight against a difficult fighter with bunch of new muscle, Fury is making a real gamble in doing that. I mean, I know Wladimir isn’t the fighter he was 15 years ago when he was capable of throwing a massive amount of punches per round, but he still very dangerous and capable of doing a lot of harm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA1G9Xq-BiA
I see Wladimir like one of those old un-exploded Blue Peakcock mines that have been buried for years. You might think that the mine has rusted out and become deactivated from years of being buried in the earth, but it might still be active and it could blow if triggered by pressure and rough handling. I see it the same way with Wladimir. He’s not the same fighter he was a decade ago, but he still could blow up in Fury’s face if he handles him wrong by trying to trade shots. All it takes is one good shot from Wladimir and Fury will be blown to oblivion. Heck, Wladimir could miss with 99% of his shots in the fight with Fury, but if he can just one good punch, I think it’ll be curtains for Fury. He’ll be picking up his teeth all over the ring and wondering what hit him.
“I have to concentrate on Wlad. He will be more dangerous than in the first fight. A wounded animal is always dangerous,” said Fury. “He would beat anyone else but me. I have destroyed him mentally and physically. When we meet he’ll see I am massive. And I will knock him out. I’m a bull.”
Fury is really kidding himself by thinking that only he was capable of beating Wladimir last November. I can’t believe Fury is naïve to believe that only he was capable of knocking Wladimir out. All you have to do is look at Wladimir’s fight against American Bryant Jennings last year in April to see that Wladimir had lost his hand-eye coordination, as well as his timing. He was missing easy shots with Jennings standing right in front of him.
Wladimir seemed to have no confidence at all in landing his right hand and left hook. The power shots he did try, he mostly missed badly. Finally, Wladimir just gave up on the idea of trying to hit Jennings with anything with power on it. He instead focused on throwing jabs and moving around the ring.
Both of those things he did quite well, and it was more than enough to win the fight. But you could see there was a problem with Wladimir’s accuracy and coordination in that fight. I spotted it a fight before that in his contest against Kubrat Pulev in November 2014. Wladimir was missing badly with shots and looking like his timing was completely gone.
Fortunately for Wladimir, he was able to land some of his huge left hooks to drop Pulev and stop him in five rounds. One of the reasons for that was because Pulev made a mistake of fighting with his left arm down by his waist instead of by his head to protect him from Wladimir’s left hooks and right hands.
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Wladimir mostly landed left hooks and jab in that fight and not his right hand. He didn’t look capable of landing right hands at all due to his timing looking shot. As such, I think it was no big deal that Fury beat Wladimir because I think many other heavyweights would have done the same thing if they’d been the ones in the ring with Klitschko rather than Fury. The only thing Fury is did was lean away from Wladimir to take away his jab and left hook.
If Wladimir had his brain on right, he would have made a simple adjustment to start throwing right hands instead of jabs and left hooks. He didn’t do that though. He just followed Fury around the ring with his right hand clock like he was going to throw it, but not doing it. Wladimir didn’t trust his own punch accuracy and timing to throw his right. It’s as if he knew he would miss with the shot if he did throw it.
The thing is if he had Deontay Wilder’s talent, it would have been no big deal if Wladimir had thrown his right hand and missed with it. He could have immediately reloaded with a right hand from in close the way that Deontay does. If you watch Deontay fight, he doesn’t fall into his opponent to hold them after he misses with a right hand.
Instead of holding under those circumstances, Deontay immediately throws a clubbing right hand from in close to nail his opponent. Deontay doesn’t hold. He keeps fighting and throwing punches. Deontay then backs away after he throws shots in close. He doesn’t wait for the referee to pull him apart from his opponents, because he doesn’t hold like Klitschko does.
I don’t see Fury doing anything differently from what he did last time because he doesn’t have anything else he can use that will work for him other than running, leaning backwards and scratching at the air with his shots. Fury cannot pull out a new bag of tricks because he doesn’t have anything else he can do other than the things he did last time.
Here are the things Fury will do against Wladimir to try and negate his offense on July 9:
1. Scratching at the air with constant weak shots that aren’t designed to land. They’re designed to keep Wladimir from being able to have a lull for him to throw a shot.
2. Running. Fury will be moving laterally all night long, which is why he’s working so hard now to burn off the 60 pounds of blubber he packed on his frame after his narrow in over Wladimir last November. Fury needs to be able to move for 12 rounds, and the only way he can od tha tis by being as lean as possible
3. Holding. I think we’re going to see Fury looking to grab Wladimir any chance he can get so that he can turn the fight into a boring waltz for 12 rounds. I don’t think Fury minds if he makes this fight boring and unwatchable for the fight fans. I think his only focus is on winning the fight, and the only way he can do that is by making the fight ugly by slowing it down to a crawl so that Wladimir can’t throw his punches the way he wants to in the rematch.