By Scott Gilfoid: Promoter Mick Hennessy is seemingly in ecstasy after watching his fighter unbeaten heavyweight contender Tyson Fury (20-0, 14 KO’s) beat up an under-trained Kevin Johnson (28-3-1, 13 kO’s) last Saturday night in a pretty much one-sided 12 round unanimous decision for Fury at the Odyssey Arena, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. The performance has Hennessy thinking Fury has the talent to win a world title in 2013, and Johnson seems to be on board with that belief.
Hennessy told express.co.uk “Tyson turns 25 next year and his early boxing education is now over as he needs to fight for the world title. His power had Johnson running for cover – and Johnson is quality.”
Oh brother, now I’ve heard it all. What power? It was more like Fury’s slaps had Johnson running for cover.
I think Hennessy isn’t seeing things clearly. It wasn’t the power that had Johnson looking to get out of harms way it was the sheer number of punches that Fury was throwing. With nothing coming back at him due to Johnson throwing very few punches, Fury was able to throw his pitty-pat punches almost nonstop. The only thing that interrupted Fury’s heavy bag work in the fight was when Fury would dance around the ring uselessly seemingly without any purpose.
What made it look especially odd was the Fury would run around the ring as if he was being chased by someone that was throwing punches instead of just a tired, aging fighter that couldn’t let his hands go. There was so much wasted movement from Fury it wasn’t even funny. Fury was literally tiring himself out with his unnecessary movement.
Hennessy is going to find out the hard way about Fury’s lack of power when he finally puts him in with a fighter with some power next year. I mean, I think it’ll be next year, but you can’t tell because Hennessy is talking about fights with both Klitschko brothers as if it’s a given that he’s going to get a fight with one of them, but Wladimir reportedly knows nothing of any fight between him and Fury, and Vitali may retire.
As such, Fury could be fighting for a world title against a slugger like Chris Arreola or Bermane Stiverne, and I wouldn’t like Fury’s chances against either of those guys. It would be Fury’s first fight against a puncher puncher, and you don’t like to see guys with padded records facing sluggers like that without having fought other guys with slightly less power. We already saw Fury get dropped by Neven Pajkic and badly stunned by Nicolai Firtha last year, and neither of those guys have power anything close to that of Vitali, Stiverne or Arreola.
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