McGuigan: Tyson Fury has every chance against Deontay Wilder, but not Klitschko

By Boxing News - 02/15/2015 - Comments

wilder4By Scott Gilfoid: Barry McGuigan believes that WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (33-0, 32 KOs) is someone that unbeaten Tyson Fury can beat if and when that fight takes place in the future.

McGuigan says Fury needs to make a statement in his next fight against Christian Hammer (17-3, 10 KOs) this month on February 28th at the O2 Arena in London, United Kingdom. I’m not sure what kind of statement that Fury can make against a fighter of this class, because Hammer struggled badly to defeat journeyman Kevin Johnson in their fight in December of 2013.

I had Hammer losing that fight. He’s not a big name, so there’s really no statement that Fury can make other than the fact that he can beat a guy with an inflated record.

“If he keeps his discipline and focus Fury has every chance against Wilder. Klitschko is another story, however,” McGuigan said via the Mirror.co.uk. “Hammer won’t detain him. It’s about looking good and sending a message to WBC world heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and WBA, IBF and WBO king Wladimir Klitschko, and in that order.”

At this point it’s still unclear whether Fury will ever face Wilder, because Fury is already making excuses for why he can’t face him by saying that he wants to face Klitschko first. The problem with Fury facing Wladimir first is that he’s very likely going to get blasted out in four or five rounds by him.

Once Fury loses to Wladimir, it’s probably going to lead to Fury going into a long rebuilding stage of his career with him facing tune-ups for 2-3 years. Heck, even if Fury wanted to fight Wilder, he couldn’t because Wilder isn’t going to face a guy that was just knocked out by Wladimir. I mean, there’s no point in Wilder taking that fight, because it would be a situation where the only thing he could accomplish in facing Fury would be to try and knock him out quicker than Wladimir did. That’s not a very interesting thing to look forward to.

Besides that, I doubt that the World Boxing Council will sanction a Fury-Wilder fight after Fury gets knocked out by Wladimir. I know the WBC let Britain’s George Groves fight in an a WBC super middleweight eliminator bout against Christopher Rebrasse after Groves had been knocked out in consecutive fights by Carl Froch, but I can’t see the WBC making a practice of sanctioning fights with a guy coming off of a knockout loss. I just don’t see it.

“He [Fury] has developed into a rounded fighter, though he does not punch as hard as he thinks he does and he is vulnerable about the whiskers,” McGuigan said.

Fury proved recently that he can beat Dereck Chisora, but that’s not a big deal because Chisora was already exposed by David Haye in 2012 in getting knocked out in 5 rounds. Chisora didn’t have the size to compete against Fury nor the power to compete against Haye. As such, the victory for Fury didn’t prove anything.

I do agree with McGuigan’s thoughts about Fury’s chin. Fury showed in his fight against Steve Cunningham, as well as in a number of other fights, that his punch resistance isn’t what it needs to be for him to face the upper tier of the heavyweight division.



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