By William Mackay: With 40-year-old Martin Rogan declining to accept a fight against British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (15-0, 10 KO’s) for the money that Fury’s promoter is offering for the fight, it looks like Fury will have to try and fight former Prizefighter contestant Coleman Barrett (13-1, 2 KO’s) for the Irish heavyweight title.
Barrett, 28, has reportedly been contacted by Fury’s promoter to see if he’s interested in taking on the 6’9” Fury for the strap. The Rogan fight seemed like a bad idea for Fury, but this would be even worse, as Barrett is completely out of Fury’s league in terms of not being in the same class as him.
This would be a bad mismatch, because Fury is a lot better than this guy and really needs to be facing better opposition if he wants to continue improving. Barrett has faced largely obscure opposition in Ireland. His big chance – if you want to call it that – came when he fought in the Prizefighter tournament in 2009, and won two of the three fights he took part in, beating Carl Baker and Scott Gammer.
However, Barrett was destroyed by Audley Harrison by a 2nd round knockout. Harrison is the guy that Fury should be looking to fight, not Barrett, a fighter that was knocked out by Harrison.
Fury needs to let go of chasing titles that no one really cares about other than a small group of people. Winning the Irish heavyweight title won’t improve Fury to the point where he can compete with the Klitschko brothers. If anything, it will hurt him because he’ll just whip some badly overmatched opponent and get absolutely nothing from the fight whatsoever.
Fury defeated Dereck Chisora by a 12 round decision in his last fight. That was Fury’s best fight of his career, as he came into it in superb shape and moved around the ring like a poor man’s version of Wladimir Klitschko. He looked good, and showed considerable improvement over his previous fights.
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