By Scott Gilfoid: IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (64-3, 53 KOs) sees Britain’s Tyson Fury (24-0, 18 KOs) as being a big mouth like former WBA heavyweight champion David Haye, who Wladimir defeated with ease four years ago in 2011.
Haye talked a good game before the fight, but then he failed to produce in the ring on the night of the fight, Haye ended up running for 12 rounds in losing a 12 round decision. Like Haye, Wladimir figures Fury to be more of a talker than an actual fighter.
Wladimir does acknowledge that Fury has a lot of size at 6’9”, but he’s already beaten a big guy in the past in 6’8” Mariusz Wach, so this shouldn’t be a problem for him to take care of Fury.
“This fight with Fury is pretty much the same situation as it was with David Haye,” Wladimir said via ESPN. “Fury does have a big mouth and is more famous for that than his fighting.”
Klitschko and Fury will be fighting each other on October 24th at the ESPRIT arena, Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. The fight will be televised on HBO in the United States, RTL in Germany and likely on Sky in the UK.
Klitschko notes that Fury likes to change his fighting stance constantly, going from the orthodox stance to southpaw. He’s no better or worse from either stance. The only advantage that Fury has in switching to southpaw is that it throws off some of his opponents. You can expect Fury to try the southpaw stance quite a bit against Wladimir, because in the past he struggled against southpaws in his fights against Corrie Sanders and in his first fight against Tony Thompson.
Against a non-puncher like Fury, I don’t see Wladimir having any problems whatsoever against him. If all Fury can do is slap with his shots, he’s going to be in for a world of hurt against Wladimir because he’s going to be nailing Fury with huge shots no matter what stance he uses. Fury can switch from orthodox to southpaw all night long, but if he doesn’t have any punching power, then he’s going to be out of luck against Klitschko.
“I did fight a tall guy, Mariusz Wach. I have experience with that as well. And I have fought undefeated fighters, but not a guy that size, who changes style between right-handed and southpaw like Fury does. He switches sides very comfortably,” Klitschko said.
This isn’t a fight where Wladimir has to worry about being hurt or knocked out like we’ve seen in the past. When Wladimir fought Sanders, Lamon Brewster, Russ Puritty and Samuel Peter, he had a lot to worry about in those fights because those guys could all punch, and they were dangerous for Wladimir. But with Fury, he’s more of a Tony Thompson type without the power needed to give Wladimir any real worry.
“I believe the hype for this fight will be similar or even more than the David Haye fight, but David Haye was a cruiserweight,” Wladimir said. “This guy [Fury]is a massive guy, tall, a true heavyweight, big mouth and undefeated.”
I think there will be some hype for this fight, but nothing like the hype that there was for the Klitschko-Haye fight. I mean, Fury doesn’t have the punching power to give Wladimir the same kind of problems that Haye was capable of before their fight in 2011. In other words, few boxing fans are giving Fury any real chance of beating Wladimir. They see this fight as a mismatch for the most part. Now if it was Deontay Wilder facing Wladimir, then there would be a ton of hype because he’s got the punching power and talent to KO Klitschko. There would be some worry there with the fans.
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