By Scott Gilfoid: After watching Friday night’s clash between British heavyweights Tyson Fury (8-0, 7 KO’s) and Big John McDermott (25-6, 16 KO’s), I’m in full agreement with referee Terry O’Conner about Fury having won the fight. I had Fury winning eight rounds to two for McDermott. Referee O’Conner had Fury winning 98-92, the exact same as me.
Personally, I could care less which fighter won the fight because I’m no fan of either of them, but I got to tell like it is. Fury won the fight. The fat guy, McDermott, didn’t consistently work hard in every round and it was all he could do to muster up three, sometimes four, good shots per round. You can’t give it to a guy like that when he’s getting his head jabbed nearly off.
While big boy McDermott would be resting in every round, Fury was tagging him with a lot of short hooks with both hands. They weren’t huge shots but in the absence of anything coming back from smothering McDermott, I had to give the rounds to Fury. I could only score the 1st and the 4th rounds to McDermott.
In the other rounds that McDermott did well in, the 8th and 9th rounds, Fury came back in the last minute of the round to steal it away from big boy. That’s not Fury or O’Conner’s fault. It’s all on McDermott. If he wanted to win the rounds, he should have fought hard all the way through them instead of landing some good shots early and then tiring out and basically trying to crowd and smother Fury.
McDermott was beaten to the punch in the last half of every round because he would get tired and just try and rest on Fury’s chest. I don’t blame McDermott for doing that because if I was carrying all that fat I’d be trying to rest all the time to. But you can’t reward a fighter rounds just because he lands three good punches in the first minute of the round, and then does nothing in the last two minutes.
I think for a lot of British boxing fans, they’re blinding by the screams from the pro-McDermott crowd. What they don’t realize, and I don’t blame them for being ignorant, is that this fight took place in McDermott’s neck of the woods in Brentwood, in Essex.
That’s McDermott’s home turf, so if you want to watch the fight, you have to turn down the sound and the drone of those British talking heads. If you listen them crow about how great McDermott looked all fight, it just had to have an effect on you. I could barely understand them through their thick accents, so I turned the volume down not to have to listen to them jabber and froth at the mouth over McDermott.
So what I saw was a fat guy that turned his back on Fury more than a couple of occasions in the last two rounds and ran across the ring. I never seen stuff like that from a professional fighter. Fury was turning the heat up on McDermott and really outworking him, in particular in the last three rounds. Those are the championship rounds, people.
You can’t slack off and think you’re going to win the fight if you’re lazy in the last three. I back O’Conner to the hilt in his decision. He got it right and the rest of you who saw McDermott winning, you need to watch the fight again and turn down the pro-McDermott crowd noise and the nonstop chattering of the talking head announcers and watch for yourself.
McDermott only landed a few good shots every round, usually in the first minute of the round, and was outworked in the last two minutes. He ate a ton of jabs in the fight and smothered his own shots by getting too close to Fury. It looks like Fury will fight him again, although I don’t know why he should.
Big boy had his chance and he lost and even worse, he lost in front of his home crowd with them screaming their heads off like maniacs. If you can’t win under those circumstances, why should Fury waste time fighting McDermott again? I wouldn’t.
If McDermott wanted to win, maybe he should have lost some weight and been in condition to work hard for the full three minutes of every round like Fury instead of trying to smother and wrestle with him on the inside. Fury said it himself after the fight, “I was the one working. He [McDermott] was trying to maul in close.” I totally agree with Fury. When you’re fighting a wide body like McDermott, of course they’re going to try and smother and maul on the inside.
With that kind of weight that they’re carrying around, they can’t stand and trade for a full three minutes of every round without exhausting themselves. But you don’t give them a victory for landing three good punches per round coupled with a ton of ugly wrestling.
You got to work hard like Fury and what the home crowd feels about it doesn’t matter. Fury won the fight and that’s the way it is and the way it should have been. I got a lot of respect for O’Conner. He got the decision right and you people who think he blew it, should be kissing his backside and apologizing. He’s a class act. Fury did a great job in this fight and I thought he looked excellent. He needs to work on his power a little and keeping the fight at a distance, but besides that, he looked damn good for a 21-year-old fighter with only eight fights.
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