By Sean McDaniel: Unbeaten British heavyweight Tyson Fury (7-0, 7 KO’s) faces a stiff test on Friday night in the way of John McDertmott (25-5, 16 KO’s) in a fight for the British heavyweight title at the Brentwood Centre, in Brentwood. Fury, 21, is not short on self confidence as he’s already predicting a knockout win over McDermott on Friday, and looking past him towards a shot at Danny Williams.
But first of all, Fury will have to get past McDermott, who might not be as easy as Fury thinks he is to beat. McDermott has shown an excellent chin and a lot of heart in his two recent losses to Williams. McDermott stood up to Williams’ power shots and returned fire for a full 12 rounds in both cases, losing each of them by close decisions.
McDermott has an excellent right hand, and may end up shocking Fury unless he’s really careful against him. The knock out McDermott is his weight. At 6’3” 250, McDermott looks badly overweight and nothing like a quality heavyweight. However, he fights much better than he looks and is able to move around the ring quite well, despite lugging around approximately 30 to 40 pounds of extra fat.
He’s not a big fighter, but he has good power in his right hand and that makes McDermott a real threat to the 21-year-old Fury. There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered about Fury’s chin. No one really knows whether or not Fury can take a good shot or not, because he’s been put in with ridiculously soft opposition since turning pro last year in December.
Thus far, Fury has beaten every opponent put in front of him, stopping all seven inside the distance. As of yet, no fighter has gone beyond four rounds with Fury. However, as I mentioned, Fury’s opponents have been poor to say the least, and they would likely be knocked out by any halfway decent heavyweight with a shred of talent. Fury’s poor could be vastly overrated and not what it appears to be by looking at his knockout record.
Fury doesn’t appear to punch all that hard, at least in comparison to the top level work class heavyweights. He gets leverage into his shots and punches well to the body, but he doesn’t seem like a one punch knockout threat. On defense, Fury looks quite vulnerable. He has a nasty habit of turning his head to the side and cringing when he’s being attacked hard by an opponent.
It looks as if Fury is waiting for a car crash or something when a fighter goes after him. I’ve seen Fury do this on a number of occasions and I think he’s asking for trouble if he continues to fight like this in the future. If Fury does this amateurish move against McDermott, I’d be willing to bet that big John will drop him with a right hand.
McDermott punches hard enough to hit a big target like the side of Fury’s head. The good thing that Fury has going for him is that most of the time, he’s the one that is doing the attacking and thereby doesn’t have to be worried as much about being on the defensive. When Fury is moving forward in the attack mode, he looks quite good as he showers his opponents with big looping punches to the head and body.
I think Fury may end up being too much for McDermott to deal with in this fight. I think McDermott might have his moments early on, but once Fury get’s his engine moving and his offense started, McDermott will likely be in for a world of hurt.
The unfortunate thing for McDermott is that he can’t afford to lose another fight, so if Fury beats him on Friday night, this could well finish McDermott in terms of future titles. This would be his third loss in a row, coupled with early defeats against Matt Skelton, Mark Krence and Nikolay Popov.
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