By Scott Gilfoid: It’s hard to believe it but 19-year-old heavyweight prospect Hughie Fury (14-0, 9 KO’s) looked better than his overweight cousin Tyson Fury last night in crushing 36-year-old Matthew Greer (16-12, 13 KO’s) in the 2nd round of a scheduled 6 round fight at the Copper Box Arena in London, UK. While the 274 lb Tyson Fury had to struggle to defeat Joey Abell last night, Hughie made it look easy in getting Greer out of there quickly without taking a lot of heat shots for his troubles.
Fury knocked Greer down three times in the 2nd round to get the stoppage. Greer’s corner threw the white towel in the center of the ring after the third knockdown. The first two knockdowns by Hughie were by body shots, and the last one was from a right to the head. In fairness to Greer, he was so far gone by that point that Hughie probably could have knocked him down by blowing on him to get him out of there. I mean, Greer’s midsection was a bright red from Hughie had pummeled him during the round with hard body shots, and he was not in the shape to continue fighting after the 2nd knockdown.
I wasn’t too impressed with Hughie’s power as far as his punches that he hit Greer with to head, but I thought Hughie did a good job of throwing body shots and jabbing him well. Hughie was light on his feet, and he did a number on Greer with snapping his jab out to dominate the fight. In contrast, Tyson Fury looked to me like an overweight fighter with a pawing jab, poor movement and not much in the way of power. It’s hard to believe that only 6 years separate Hughie and Tyson Fury, because Tyson looked at least 15-20 years older than Hughie last night. Hughie has a much more professional fighting style than Tyson.
As good as Hughie looked, there are still major questions about whether he has the stuff to make it to the 1st tier of the division. He looked winded after just two rounds, and he didn’t show the power to hurt Greer when throwing punches upstairs. I can’t explain what the problem is for Hughie. He can punches well to the body, but when he aims his shots to the head, the power just isn’t there.
All I can think of is Hughie lacks the shoulder strength to aim his punches upstairs to get any power on them. With his body punching, it’s kind of a gravity thing where Hughie can just fall forward to generate the power needed to hurt his opponents. But for throwing head shots, you actually need shoulder power to hurt an opponent with those kinds of shots. Thus far, I haven’t seen any power from Hughie when he’s throwing to the head. That’s obviously going to be a problem for Hughie when he gets to the next level and he’s in the ring with talents like Deontay Wilder and Chris Arreola. Those guys can punch hard to the head, and Hughie isn’t going to be able to count on stopping them with body shots, because he’ll be leaving his head wide open for shots each time he goes to throw to the body.
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