By Juan Flores: Tyson Fury is feeling confident now that he’s suddenly regained his motivation to resume his stalled-out boxing career. Fury, 29, took to social media this week to call out heavyweight champions Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder, and to let them know that he feels he’s ready to beat either one of them.
The unbeaten Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) thinks he can beat Joshua and Wilder even at his current weight of 40 stone, which comes out to 350 pounds. That’s obviously an enormous amount of weight for Fury to be at right, but it’s much lighter than what he’d been looking like in the past. At one point, Fury was positively huge. If I were to guess Fury’s weight in the recent past, I’d say over 400 pounds. To get that heavy, Fury had to have been eating well. On a post on Instagram on Monday, Fury looked badly out of breath just walking and talking. It was worrisome watching Fury look so out of breath from just walking. I can’t even imagine Fury fighting at this point without him keeling over at some point without even being touched.
“I reckon I can beat Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder now even at 25 stone & after being out almost 2 years!” Fury said on Twitter. “My style is unbeatable. Ask Wlad[imir Klitschko]. My fight with Joshua will be won with my feet!”
Fury last fought in November 2015 in beating Wladimir Klitschko by a 12 round unanimous decision. Fury weighed 247 pounds for that fight, which was the lowest he’d been in 3 years since 2012. Fury had been fighting in the 250 and 260 range from 2013 to 2015. But for Fury to get down to his old fighting weight, he’s going to need to lose at least 100 pounds.
It’s difficult to fathom a world class athlete having to lose that amount of weight and still being effective. To be sure, Joshua and Wilder both want to fight Fury, but that’s only because he brings so much to them in terms of money and attention from the boxing fans. Joshua and Fury obviously know they would have an excellent chance of beating Fury, given the amount of weight that he’s going to need to take off to fight them. It’s just the weight though.
Fury has been out of the ring for 2 years, and he’s got a lot of ring rust on him. Fury’s urgency to get back into the ring as fast as possible to fight Joshua and Wilder reeks of desperation. Fury isn’t likely going to go about returning to the ring the right way by slowly easing his way back into fighting world class competition. Fury is likely going to use the Ricky Hatton approach of going straight from a long layoff into a big fight that he’s not ready for. Hatton was out of the ring for 3 ½ years when he made a comeback against Vyachelslav Senchenko on November 24, 2012. Hatton did well for much of the fight until getting stopped in round 9. If Hatton had worked his way up to fighting at world class level instead of going straight into the Senchenko fight, he probably would have beaten him. Before that fight, Hatton’s last bout was a 2nd round knockout loss to Manny Pacquiao on May 2, 2009. If Fury takes the Hatton approach to his comeback, he’ll face Joshua or Wilder straightaway in his first or second fight back and wind up getting knocked out.
“Can’t hit what you can’t see,” said Fury. “The best footwork in the game. I’m gonna stop you Anthony Joshua inside 8 rounds watch me go. Let’s make it Britain’s biggest fight ever, I say we get Lennox Lewis and Frank Bruno involved in the #furyvsAJfight.”
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn is extremely pleased at the news of Fury wanting to make a comeback against his fighter AJ. Hearn wants the Fury vs. Joshua fight to take place in 2018. That would work for Hearn and Joshua, but it’ll likely lead to bad results for Fury. He’s been out of the ring for such a long time. He needs to take at least a year to get his act together again if he wants to be effective in his comeback. It doesn’t look like Fury is going to do that though. He’s going to go after the quick payday against Joshua, and likely lose badly and disappear for another 2 years or so.
“It’s Anthony Joshua versus the world right now, I have got to fight them all,” Joshua said to skysports.com. “It works well for me and I think it works well for people who want to watch me, and Fury get it on. I wish him the best of luck with what he’s going through because we need to see him back in the ring. Eddie has been on the phone to Tyson, trying to make things happen and support his cause,” said Joshua.
Fury needs to get cleared to fight again by the UK Anti-Doping agency and the British Boxing Board of Control. With the kind of money Fury can bring to the UK, it’s hard to imagine they’ll deny him the chance to resume his career.
If Fury is smart, he’ll take a half a dozen tune-up fights, and slowly lose the weight to get back down to 250 lbs. Ideally, Fury needs to have at least 3 or 4 fights at 250 lbs. once he gets his weight back down. If Fury rushes it like many boxing fans think he will, then his comeback will be a disaster. He’ll lose badly to Joshua, and then he’ll probably retire for a while, gain a bunch of weight feeling sorry for himself, and then make another comeback in a comparable manner.