Hughie Fury with tough test against Rudenko on February 21st in Monte Carlo

By Boxing News - 02/10/2015 - Comments

fury5656By Scott Gilfoid: 20-year-old unbeaten heavyweight prospect Hughie Fury (14-0, 8 KOs) may taste defeat for the first time on February 21st when he faces the tough as nails Andriy Rudenko (24-1, 16 KOs) on the Gennady Golovkin vs. Martin Murray card at the Salle des Étoiles, Monte Carlo.

The Fury-Rudenko fight is scheduled for 10 rounds, and you can bet that the fight will last that long unless Rudenko can get Fury out of there. You can’t count on Fury to score a knockout in this fight because he lacks the punching power to do any kind of damage to the steel-chinned Rudenko.

Peter Fury, the trainer/father of Hughie, knows that he’s going to be in for a tough challenge in this fight, but he believes he’s going to be able to beat him with his boxing skills. I don’t know if he’s right, because the 6’6” Hughie isn’t going to be able to move for three minutes of every round for ten solid rounds without having to stop for prolonged periods of time to exchange shots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVREqGRdXJQ

We’ve already seen that Hughie gets tired and banged up when he faces awful 3rd tier opposition. You can only imagine what it’s going to be like for Hughie once he starts taking head shots again and again from Rudenko.

“Rudenko is a good test for him,” Peter said via Thaboxingvoice.com. “By no means is this an easy fight. If Hughie had a bit of a weak chin or some major flaws, Rudenko wouldn’t be the kid we’d pick for this fight. We’d steer clear of him completely.”

It’s interesting that Peter Fury is admitting that they’d steer clear of a fighter with good power. Normally you don’t see fighters admitting things like that. Rudenko is definitely not a huge puncher. He’s got moderate power, but he’s still dangerous enough to give Fury a real beating if he stops and trades with him.

Rudenko has Lucas Browne looking battered and tired in their recent fight. As far as Hughie’s chin, we really don’t know how good it is. I mean, Hughie’s opposition has been 3rd tier fighters without any power or skills, so we really don’t know if he can take a good punch or not. I hear that he spars with Tyson Fury sometimes, but Tyson has no power so he doesn’t really get his chin tested the way he needs to in order to find out anything about him.

YouTube video

“You’ve got to be wary of Rudenko because he’s quite good at cutting the ring off. You’re not going to just keep him at bay with your jab. He’ll walk through your shots to land his own. He’s very, very tough and durable,” Peter said.

The fact that Peter is commenting on the way that Rudenko cuts off the ring suggests that he’s going to have Hughie running from him to keep him from getting hit a lot in the fight.

Like I said, I don’t know if it’s going to work because I don’t think Hughie’s going to be able to run for a full 10 rounds without him running out of gas and taking a ton of punishment in this fight. Rudenko is a fairly advanced fighter for a guy like Hughie, who lacks punching power and who has stamina problems.



Comments are closed.