by Scott Gilfoid: Heavyweight Tyson Fury (20-0, 14 KO’s) was loudly booed by his own boxing fans last night in the process of beating an unmotivated looking Kevin Johnson (28-3-1, 13 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 119-118, 119-110 and 119-108 in their WBC heavyweight eliminator in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Fury lacked the power to finish off a guy that was there for the taking. When you’ve got a fighter that isn’t throwing any punches like Johnson, the fans expect you to push the accelerator down to try and knock the guy out, but Fury didn’t have the power to do that. When he would unload with his best shots they were like slaps more than power shots and Johnson had no problems taking them.
Fury said this after the fight: “I never went in to knock him out. He’s not a guy to go and smash up. He’s a world class fighter.”
Oh my, that sounds like an excuse to me from Fury, doesn’t it? It looked to me like Fury simply didn’t have the power to get the job done last night.
Moving forward into the future, Fury is going to struggle like most fighters do that lack power. When you don’t possess power it means that you have to take much more punishment in winning fights because you can only win by decisions instead of quick knockouts. This means that you’re going to get hit a lot more and that’s a bad thing for Fury because the guys he wants to tackle are the Klitschko brothers, and if you let them punch you for 12 rounds bad things are going to happen. Fury’s defense isn’t good enough to avoid getting speared by the jabs from the 6’6″ and 6’7″ Vitali, so it isn’t as if Fury can run on the outside and avoid getting hit by the Klitschkos.
The crowd expected more from Fury because Johnson was little more than a punching bag in this fight because he just couldn’t throw any punches for whatever reason.
Johnson has never been a real offensive fighter and he hadn’t looked good in losing recently in the Prizefighter tournament. But in this fight, Johnson fought like he was not in shape. It’s no secret that Johnson was pulled in for the fight on only 3 weeks notice, so it’s not surprising that he didn’t have the conditioning to fight hard for a full 12 rounds.
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