By William Mackay: At Friday’s weigh-in, undefeated Tyson Fury (17-0, 12 KO’s) weighed in at a career low of 245 pounds for Saturday’s fight for the vacant Irish heavyweight title against 40-year-old Martin Rogan (14-2, 7 KO’s) at the Odyssey Arena, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. Rogan came in at a solid 228lbs.
The 245 for Fury represents a career low, beating the 247 that Fury weighed in for his fight against John McDermott in September 2009. However, Fury looks really thin around the face and it looks like Fury not only stripped off a lot of fat in training camp but also lost a substantial amount of muscle along with it. Fury reportedly ballooned up to over 300 pounds around Christmas time with his overeating. All total, Fury packed on 70 pounds of pure blubber with his gorging of fast food.
However, that’s not the worst part of it. Instead of taking the weight off slowly the way you normally should, Fury took off 70 pounds in only two months. That’s much too fast to take off weight, and it tells you that that he doing it with a lot of dieting in addition to exercise. For a fighter, it’s never a good idea to take off weight fast, as you lose important muscle along with the flab.
There’s no telling how Fury will perform having lost all that weight. It’s not like before when he’d take off weight to get down to the 250s. He wasn’t taking the weight off quickly. He was doing it the smart way by melting it off during the training camp. But this time he took off too much weight in a short period of time and we could see a weak Fury tonight. That’s the important point. He looks in good shape, but he may not be fighting shape. He’ll still win because he’s facing a 40-year-old fighter after all, but it’s possible we could see an upset tonight if Rogan is able to put it on Fury early. Rogan looked a lot stronger than Fury at the weigh-in.
It isn’t that Fury HAD to drain himself to make any kind of weight. What happened was that Fury got fat as a blimp around Christmas time in putting on 70 pounds, and instead of taking things slowly in getting that weight off, Fury went and took it off in two short months. You don’t take weight off that fast unless you’re also stripping off a lot of muscle in the process. That would help explain why Fury seems to have lost muscle size as well as the fat. At the end of the day, it probably doesn’t matter against a fighter as old, limited and out of his league like Rogan, but you never know. If Rogan starts putting it on Fury early in the fight, we could get a big upset. I doubt it but it’s possible.
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