By Scott Gilfoid: The lanky and now overweight heavyweight Tyson Fury (21-0, 15 KO’s) will be facing the hard hitting southpaw slugger Joey Abell (29-7, 28 KO’s) tonight in what could be a very interested fight while it lasts at the Copper Box Arena in London, UK. Fury has been sitting around for the past 10 months resting on his laurels from his wins over pretty much exclusively 2nd and 3rd tier fodder, and he’s not stayed busy like normal fighters do.
Fury doesn’t have much of a chin, and I think this could very well go badly for him if Abell goes after him the way he’s done against other heavyweights with weak chins. Tonight he’s going to be tasting some left hand bombs from Abell, and I hope for Fury’s sake that his chin has improved over the last 10 month with all the time off he’s had from the sport.
After watching a couple of Abell’s recent fights, I think he’s got a decent chance of knocking Fury out clean if Fury chooses to stand in front of him and trade. Abell was knocked out in his last fight by the unbeaten Kubrat Pulev, but that wasn’t much of a fight due to Pulev constantly throwing jabs and backing off each time Abell would come forward to try and bounce left hands off his chin.
Abell was still able to land some healthy shots that would knock most guys out, but Pulev showed a great chin in taking those shots. Fury isn’t anywhere near as talented as Pulev, and he definitely doesn’t have the chin that he’s got, so it’s possible that Abell could score a quick knockout in this fight. Fury says he wants to test Abell by getting in the trenches with him and exchanging power shots. I hope so because that will make the fight a heck of a lot more interesting to watch, but at the same time if Fury does that against Abell, then we could se a big upset with fury getting smacked around.
Fury tasted the canvas in his last fight against Steve Cunningham last April. Fury also had problems in fights against Nicolai Firtha, Neven Pajkic and John McDermott. Each one of those fighters were able to land some nice shots against Fury and had him in a certain amount of distress. I mean, Fury shouldn’t have struggled against those guys because these are 3rd tier guys, but that’s what happened. Fury had to battle hard to beat each one of them.
Abell has problems against guys that have a little power and/or a great jab. Fury has neither going for him, so if he’s going to win this fight then he’s going to need to go the full 12 rounds. The problem with leaving Abell around for 12 rounds is that he punches too hard to leave him in there for a full 12 round fight without getting hit with some big shots.
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