By Scott Gilfoid: #3 IBF, #4 WBA, #4 WBO, #5 WBC heavyweight contender Tyson Fury (23-0, 17 KOs) starts his training camp today for his stay busy fight against #4 WBO Christian Hammer (17-3, 10 KOs) on February 28th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Fury is technically facing a top five contender for this fight in order to stay busy for a fight later on this year against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko. However, the 27-year-old Hammer is more like a 2nd tier fighter than a top five 1st tier guy, and it’s hard to take this fight seriously.
Hammer was beaten by both Taras Bidenko and Mariusz Wach in 2010. Those were the only real quality fighters Hammer has ever fought, and we’re not even talking real quality here. Hammer has a controversial win over journeyman Kevin Johnson in 2013 in a fight where Hammer was out-worked by Johnson for 10 rounds, yet still given the win in his adopted country of Germany.
”Can’t wait to start camp on Monday. Feeling really hungry this year. Watch out world,” Fury said on his twitter.
Whether Fury is hungry or not matters little. He can be hungry as he wants, but once he’s past Hammer and facing Wladimir Klitschko, Fury is likely to be as outgunned by the 6’6” Ukrainian as Kubrat Pulev was recently.
Fury doesn’t have the fire power, hand speed or athletic ability to compete against a guy like Wladimir. The only thing Fury has going for him is his 6’9” height, but the height is wasted because he’s poor at jabbing.
I dare say that the 6’6” Wladimir will be able to stand on the outside all night long and control the taller Fury with his jab alone if he wants to. That’s probably what Wladimir will do. He’s not going to stand in close and fight Fury in a phone booth the way Fury likes to fight his opponents.
Hammer has some power, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes after Fury immediately and tries to club him into submission. I mean, I don’t think Hammer will have any success with his efforts, but he’s definitely going to make it tough on Fury for a while.
Fury is there to be hit due to him always giving up his height and reach by standing too close. However, Hammer is painfully slow and not particularly quick as well. He’s not going to be able to give Fury a real test the way that someone like Bryant Jennings, Pulev and Carlos Takam all would. I could see all three of those fighters potentially beating Fury if those fights were to happen. You include Alexander Ustinov to that list, but then again if Fury never faces them, he’ll be alright.
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