By Sean McDaniel: Huge 6’9” Tyson Fury (7-0, 7 KO’s) will be taking a big step up on September 11th against John McDermott (25-5, 16 KO’s) in a scheduled bout for John’s BBBofC English heavyweight title at the National Sports Centre, Crystal Palace, in London. McDermott, 29, has lost his last two fights to Danny Williams, losing one of them by a 12-round majority decision and the most recent one by a 12 round split decision in May 2009.
McDermott, a heavyset 256 pound fighter who stands 6’3”, ran out of gas in the second fight with Williams early on and the two spent the last six rounds clinching constantly. However, both fighters were very close and could have gone either way, especially the first bout.
Against the huge Fury, McDermott will have his hands full because he will be giving up six inches in height against Fury. And unlike Williams, Fury doesn’t like to clinch a lot, preferring to keep his distance from his opponent so that he can throw a lot of punches.
McDermott will have to hope that he can hit Fury with something big along the way, because he doesn’t have much of a chance of outworking him. Of course, McDermott can always elect to clinch Fury after every punch, but that will only succeed in making the fight dull to watch like McDermott’s two fights with Williams.
McDermott hasn’t exactly been blown away by looking at the types of fighters that the 21-year-old Fury has beaten since turning pro late last year, calling them “ordinary.” McDermott, however, has hardly room to talk, because in taking away Williams from his resume, most of McDermott’s opponents have been B and C level opponents with none of them even closely resembling world class heavyweights.
As such, McDermott and Fury are both in the same boat in terms of competition faced in their careers, with McDermott getting a slight edge with his two fights against an older Danny Williams. This wasn’t hardly a prime Williams that McDermott has had to face, luckily for him.
Fury recently defeated Aleksandrs Selezens by a third round stoppage last weekend on July 18th. Fury looked flabby, slow and clearly out of shape as he fought at a slow pace for much of the fight until turning it up a gear in the 3rd to get the stoppage win. Fury later blamed his poor conditioning and performance on a back problem that has prevented him from training hard for the fight.
Fury says that the injury won’t prevent him from training for the McDermott fight and that he is looking to get some good sparring partners from outside of the country. Finding good sparring partners is a problem for Fury, he says. Apparently, few good sparring partners want to train with him for some reason.
If true, this could be a problem for Fury moving forward and could potentially limit his growth as a fighter if he’s prevented from getting capable sparring partners to train with. He might have to consider moving out of the country if he wants to realize his full potential as a fighter.
Comments are closed.