Fury vs. Johnson on Saturday night

By Scott Gilfoid: Undefeated #3 WBC, #8 WBO heavyweight contender Tyson Fury (19-0, 14 KO’s) faces his first real threat in his career this Saturday night in 33-year-old Kevin Johnson (28-2-1, 13 KO’s) at the Odyssey Arena in Belfast, Northern, Ireland.

Fury, 24, has all kinds of career dreams of facing IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko and beating him to capture all of his titles and becoming the top heavyweight in boxing. Well, Johnson is just one of many gatekeepers that can shut the 6’9″ Fury’s dreams down in their tracks on Saturday before he’s even gotten his big dream fight with Wladimir.

Fury’s going to realize early on that he made a big mistake in choosing Johnson to fight, because he can actually fight and isn’t just an out of shape fighter someone that plods forward taking shots. Fury’s best opponent of his career is an out of shape Dereck Chisora, who Fury beat last year by a 12 round decision.

Chisora was pretty limited with his offense and made it easy for Fury to win the fight. Johnson is a much different fighter due to his excellent jab and powerful left hook. Those are his main weapons in his arsenal and they’re good enough to hand Fury his first loss of his career unless we get a dodgy decision. God, I sure hope not because I’d hate to see Fury get a tainted win that no one respects in the boxing world. That would ruin a future fight with Wladimir and him because Fury would luck like an illegitimate challenger.

Johnson fought well in the Prizefighter tournament last June, but ended up losing a close three round decision to Tor Hamer. I don’t count losses like that as being actual losses because Prizefighter type fights are only three rounds, and it’s not like a real fight because the fighters are forced to fight at a fast pace instead of using their boxing skills to win. I knew Johnson would have problems in the tourney because he’s not a slugger in the classic mode, and he had little chance of chopping down opponents to win the tournament in three round bouts.