Phill Fury defeats Byrne

By Boxing News - 10/04/2009 - Comments

fury4456By Nate Anderson: Undefeated light middleweight prospect Phill Fury (3-0, 1 KO’s), the younger cousin of heavyweight Tyson Fury, defeated journeyman Louis Byrne (1-9, 1 KO’s) by a four round decision on Saturday night on the undercard of the John Murray vs. Jon Thaxton British lightweight championship bout at the Leisure Centre, Altrincham, Cheshire. Referee Steve Gray scored the bout 39-37.

I personally had Byrne winning the fight. Fury, 18, won the first two rounds by virtue of his left hooks to the body and rights to the head. However, in round three, Fury began to look really tired and sloppy with his punches. He lost whatever little power that he had on his shots and started slap and miss badly with them. At the same time, Fury landed a left-right combination south of the border.

This was on top of the low blows that Fury had landed in both the 1st and 2nd rounds, leaving referee Steve Gray no choice but to deduct a point from Fury. In the meantime, Byrne was controlling the round with his long jab and right hand leads. He landed cleanly through most of the round and was rarely hit flush by the tired looking Fury in the round. It looked easily like a 10-8 round for Fury.

In the 4th and final round, Fury started off well in the opening minute of the round, landing some hard right hands to head. However, Byrnes came on in the second half of the round and was able to hit Fury with a lot of stiff jabs and right hands. By the end of the fight, Fury looked exhausted and was missing with his shots while Byrne was tagging him again and again with shot.

All in all, I thought it was a bad decision. Fury has potential but he needs to work on his stamina. It looked like he trained to only go two rounds because he was tired by the 3rd and unable to fight with the same intensity that he did in the opening two rounds. Unlike his cousin, Tyson Fury, Phill Fury doesn’t appear to have much in the way of power. He punches well to the body but doesn’t have big power when going to the head for some reason. This may change in the future as Fury gets older and puts on more weight.



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