By Bob Smith: The victory of Tyson Fury over Wladimir Klitschko last Saturday evening rocked the boxing world – it was a huge upset for Fury and a quite impressive and also deserved win.
While the fight itself was difficult to watch and quite boring, Fury was the clear winner and executed an excellent game plan. This fight was one of the few fights in the career of Klitschko that he went into the ring as the smaller man, and his techniques proved to be inappropriate or worthless against someone larger.
The first point that should be made is the importance of a good boxing trainer. Were Emmanuel Steward in the ring with Klitschko last night I have no doubt that he would have won. Nevertheless, Fury was the better man, and exposed the “robotic” style of Klitschko that apparently is wholly dependent on a smaller opponent engaging him face to face in front, and not using movement or angles.
This is also a significant fight because it will be factored in to the legacy of Klitschko. This is the first time that he faced someone his own size or bigger, and clearly by any standard he struggled. How would he have fared against heavyweight champions of the past? I still think he would have beaten smaller less agile champions such as Foreman or Joe Louis, but perhaps he would have seriously struggled with or been outclassed by Muhammad Ali, as Fury is no Muhammad Ali, even if he looked like one at times in comparison to Klitschko at least, last night. But it brings up the question of whether or not it would have been a fair fight at all, for he is so much bigger than perhaps his more skilled rivals in previous generations.
In fact, very realistically, by this time next year, the top four heavyweights in the world could well be Fury, Klitschko, Wilder, and Joshua. All four men are enormous, and assuming that Wilder can find a way to get past Alexander Povetkin, he belongs in the very elite with Fury and Klitschko. While Joshua is not quite there yet, by the end of 2016, he may well be up with Wilder and Fury as the potential future of the division.
What do these four heavyweights have in common? Well, for one their enormous height and reach. There is a minuscule difference of four pounds that separates some divisions, and in the mid-level weight classes it is 7 or 8 pounds. Yet within the one heavyweight division, there are individuals who are anywhere from 201 pounds to 250 pounds. While it would not make sense to have a height limit for the division, as would make the division different from all the other ones, with the Rise of the Giants, at some point there should be a division within heavyweights – such as at 225 pounds or 230 pounds – so that it is not the case that only Giants dominate the division.
The Olympics introduced a super heavyweight division of 200 pounds in 1984; there is no reason why boxing cannot introduce one between 2016 and 2020, if it is the case that all of the top four contenders are Giants and eliminate with ease anyone half a foot shorter and twenty pounds lighter than they are.
So, for me the lesson of this fight is that while Klitschko is a great heavyweight champion, and one of the best ever, he appears to be only average for the super heavyweight division, and those of his size – Wilder, Joshua and Fury, would give problems to him as well as to each other, even if all of them can beat much smaller men.
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