By Scott Gilfoid: Former world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury took to social media on Thursday to say he’s going to take off a ton of weight and return to the top of the division as the No 1 heavyweight in the world. Fury is vowing to burn off the 100 pounds of fat he’s put in the last 2 years. Fury is rumored to be weighing 365 lbs. right now. He’s got an absurd amount of weight to lose.
Fury has talked about wanting to fight on the undercard of WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders’ next fight on July 8. I really don’t see that as a possibility. Fury has too much blubber to take off in that short of a time frame. Fury still doesn’t have his boxing license to fight.
Fury’s training with another overweight fighter in Saunders, who has a mess of flab to burn off in 8 weeks’ time for his July 8 fight against #1 WBO Avtandil Khurtsidze. Fury, 29, looks to be the fatter guy than Saunders to me, but not by much. The two of them will be working hard in Marbella, Spain. Saunders has less fat to take off than Fury, but he still has a considerable amount to drop for him to get ready for the fight with Khurtsidze.
“Just been sat downstairs will Billy Joe and had an in-depth conversation about our lives and careers, and what we wanna do and where we wanna go. You know I’ve never been sure, even the day after the Klitschko fight, that I’d ever fight again. Well the thing is I’ve made me mind up. I am definitely, definitely going to return. God willing – Inshallah – I will return and return to my best,” said Fury on his Instagram.
I wonder what Fury and Saunders were discussing for Fury to get worked up enough to finally take off all that weight? You’d think that someone in Fury’s life would have sat him down a LONG time ago and told him that he needed to trim off that fat, if not for his boxing career than for the sake of his long term health. It’s not good news for Fury to be walking around at close to 400lbs. That’s just too much weight to be carrying.
It should be interesting to see how long Fury sticks to his decision to train hard and burn off all that weight. For Fury to get back to the top of the heavyweight division, he’ll need to give up all of his vices, be it food or drink.
Fury will have to do without those niceties. It’s hard though. Once people get used to eating caloric rich foods and drinking the best sprits, it’s tough on them to suddenly do without and embrace pain and suffering for months/years on end. Frankly, I don’t think Fury has it in him to live the kind of lifestyle that will return him to the top of the game. Fury has had 2 good years of living well and eating like a king. Going back to a strict diet and hard training 24/7 is going to be next to impossible. Fury would have to live a Spartan lifestyle year on out, and I don’t think he can do. Heck, losing 100 lbs. is incredibly hard for someone that is dedicated and willing to suffer to get the weight off. For Fury, it’s going to be next to impossible because he strikes me as the type that likes to live it up and hang with the back slappers.
“I don’t believe, on a serious note, there’s a heavyweight out there that can lace my boots up,” said Fury. ”Any of ‘em! And I’m gonna prove the world wrong yet again. They didn’t give me a prayer last time, and a lot of people are not even giving me a prayer to lose the weight, but I will do it. Hundred percent,” said Fury.
Fury is saying all of this now, but I don’t think he’s going to be too interested in stinking it out once he starts sweating from hard training and having to skip his tasty snacks. Being an athlete is hard work. You’ve got to train like mad and live off of food that isn’t tasty and doesn’t fill you up, especially when you have a weight problem. It’s got to be even worse.
For Fury, trimming down from 365lbs is going to be a monumental task. That is an AWFUL lot of blubber that he’s going to need to take off. Fury’s old fighting weight is 250lbs. To get down to that weight, Fury is going to need to trim off 115lbs of pure fat. That weight represents a huge percentage of Fury’s current body weight. I don’t know if it’ll be wise for Fury to fight anytime soon. Even if the weight does come off, Fury will need time to adjust to his new lower weight, because it’s going to be extremely hard on his body to get down to 250lbs after all this time with him carrying around tons of fat.
I think the same thing goes for Billy Joe Saunders. He looks as big as a house right now. He’s got to be close to 200lbs or more. For Saunders to get down to 160 for the Khurtsidze fight, he’s going to need to train his backside off and stay away from the pies, cookies and candy or whatever he’s been eating to balloon up in weight since his last fight in December. As fat as Saunders is, he must have been power feeding ever since his close 12 round decision win over Russian Artur Akavov last December. You don’t get that fat that quickly unless you’re eating high on the hog. If I was the cook for Saunders and Fury, I’d put a few sprigs of parsley and lettuce on their plates along with can of tuna, and tell them, ‘Bon appetite.’ That’s all they would be getting. I might throw in some bread every now and then, but I wouldn’t overdo it. They need to burn some serious weight in a short time.
If Fury does lose the 100-115lbs of weight that he’s carrying around, then he should think about moving SLOWLY with his career by taking on some novices to start his career over. I wouldn’t even put Fury in with a journeyman level heavyweight at this point, because there would be too much risk involved in him facing a decent level fighter. I think Fury needs to hit the rest button on his career and start from the basic low level fighters that a typical professional fighter would face when they start their careers. If Fury can put together a string of wins over some tomato cans, then he should move up to the journeyman level fighters and then eventually actual contenders. I think Fury needs a good 2-3 years to get back to the top. That’s how I would do it. He’s been out of the loop for 2 years resting on his laurels. I think Fury will need at least that much time to get back to where he was before.