By Scott Gilfoid: After spending pretty much his entire career fighting weak opposition of limited talent, unbeaten British heavyweight Tyson Fury (24-0, 18 KOs) is raring to go for his first meaningful fight of any substance against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (64-3, 53 KOs) on November 28th at the ESPRIT Arena in Dusselforf, Germany.
But instead of having the sense enough to realize that he’s bitten off more than he can chew, Fury is flapping his gums, saying it’s going to be easy to hit the 6’6” Klitschko. While the 6’9” Fury does have the height to land his shots in theory against Wladimir, he really doesn’t though. Fury has a bad habit of leaning backwards or crouching forward in his fights, which puts him at around 6-feet tall.
Fury basically gives away nine inches of height with the way he leans and crouches, and this will obviously make it tough for him to connect with his shots against the tall 6’6” Klitschko, who fights tall unlike Fury.
“I won’t find him hard to hit like everybody else does,” Fury said via the telegraph.co.uk. “His greatest wins have come over David Haye and Alexander Povetkin. They’re both 6’2” and 6’3” guys. They’re small, a lot smaller than I am. I’m very tall and I’ve got a four inch reach advantage on him as well.”
Like I said, Fury gives up his height when he fights, and that makes him about the same size as the smaller guys that Wladimir has fought like Povetkin and Haye. I mean, you can make an argument that Fury’s height is really no better than the 5’11 ½” Jean Marc Mormeck, who Wladimir stopped in the 4th round in a one-sided contest in 2012.
One interesting side note is that Mormeck recently barely lost a 10 round decision to cruiserweight Mateusz Masternak last year in November 2014. Masternak looked horrible in fighting the 40+-year-old Mormeck last year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ1u1P9bTDg
Masternak will be fighting Tony Bellew next month on December 12th on the Anthony Joshua vs. Dillian Whyte card at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Bellew’s promoter Eddie Hearn thinks Masternak is a good test for Bellew, but if Masternak couldn’t even conclusively beat Mormeck, then what does that tell you about him?
“A lot of things swing in my favor, but one things he has that outweighs me a lot is experience. He’s [Klitschko] had 60 odd professional fights compared to my 24. That’s the equalizer, I’d say,” Fury said.
It’s not just Wladimir’s experience that is in his favor for the Fury fight. If it was only experience that Wladimir has going for him in this fight, then I’d say that Fury has a good chance of winning, because experience can only take you so far when you’re as old as the 39-year-old Klitschko. But what’s even more important than experience is Klitschko’s hand speed, punching power, jab, defense and mobility. Wladimir is better than Fury in all of those departments. Other than Fury’s youth, he doesn’t have any advantage going for him.
Like I said, Fury gives up his height when he fights, so you can’t even call his three inch height advantage over Wladimir as being a real advantage in this fight, because Fury will surely stupidly give it up by crouching down or leaning back when he fights.
Wladimir will be able to tee off on Fury with his jabs, left hooks and right hands by throwing his shots at around the six-foot level of where Fury’s head will be. And by Fury crouching down with his stance, he won’t be able to escape from Wladimir’s punches when he starts bombing him from the outside.
“You just wonder what [Klitschko’s] going to be told when he goes back to the corner and he can’t land his shots or he’s getting caught more than he’s ever been caught,” Fury said. “I believe I’ll hit Wladimir more times than he’s ever been hit before purely due to my size, athleticism and speed.”
If Fury tries to hit Wladimir a lot in this fight, then I see the fight ending quickly with Wladimir nailing Fury with a big left hook counter punch or a right hand. Wladimir is at his best when his opponents throw a lot of shots at him, because it opens them up for his counter shots. The only time Wladimir struggles is when he faces fighters that are really defensive, throw few punches, and use a lot of head movement like we saw in Wladimir’s last fight against American Bryant Jennings last April in their fight at Madison Square Garden in New York. Wladimir had problems connecting with huis shots due to all the head movement that Jennings used.
I predict that Fury is going to try and land a lot of punches, and it’s going to open him up for one of Wladimir’s big left hooks to the head that will knock Fury out cold. The referee won’t even need to make a count, because I see Fury being totally unconscious and in need of assistance to help waking up. I think the loss for Fury on 11/28 will be the beginning of the end of his career. I can’t see him coming back from this knockout loss, and I think he might lose what little punch resistance that he has.
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