By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten heavyweight Hughie Fury (18-0, 10 KOs) has been added to the April 30th card headlined by Billy Joe Saunders vs. Max Bursak at the Copper Box Arena. The 6’6” Hughie has to get past his next scheduled opponent Nagy Aguilera (20-9, 14 KOs) on March 26 in order for him to fight on the card on 4/30.
Fury-Aguilera fight will be taking place on the Chris Eubank Jr. vs. Nick Blackwell fight card at the Wembley Arena in London, UK. It’s supposed to be a winnable fight for the 21-year-old Hughie against Aguilera, but you just never can tell with Hughie.
Fury doesn’t have much punching power, and he’s fighting a guy that can hit a lot harder than him, and who doesn’t mind getting hit himself while he’s trying to take out his opponents.
“I am going to make a big impact over the next few years and join my cousin Tyson at the very top of the sport,” Fury said via ESPN.com.
Right now, you can’t say anything about what the young Hughie will do three years from now. We haven’t seen him matched up against anyone remotely good enough to tell us anything about him. What I do know is that the level of opposition Hughie has been fighting is not impressive at all. Yeah, he’s 18-0, but he’s been fighting pretty much little more than stiffs. I mean, if you took some of the many heavyweight contenders in the division and fed them the choice soft opposition that Hughie has been fighting, they’d likely have the same 18-0 record that he has, but with more knockouts.
Hughie supposedly has not developed his man strength yet. Whether he ever will is the big question. He’s 21 now, and you would think that he would have his power by this point. The fact that he’s still not punching with a lot of power might be a bad omen. It tells you that Hughie could wind up as a finesse type of heavyweight in his career.
Hughie’s fight on April 30 will be televised on BoxNation. That’s going to give young Hughie some badly needed visibility in the UK. If he can look good in that fight, win without running and holding, he then might be on his way to making a name for himself. Hughie will need to keep having his fights televised, and he’ll need to start facing fighters with a pulse at some point if he wants to develop a big fan base.
Hughie had a chance to fight for a world title last year against WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder, but Hughie’s team turned down the fight. They wanted a full eight weeks of training before taking the fight. They would have gotten five weeks. If Hughie might wind up kicking himself if he never gets another chance to fight for a world title. You’d hate to see Hughie having blown his only chance he’s ever going to get to fight for a world title. I think that could be the case if he doesn’t develop his man strength and start throwing with the power needed for him to beat the contenders in the division.
In Hughie’s last three fights, he’s beaten Larry Olubamiwo, Emilio Ezquiel Zarate and George Arias. Those are the usual type of opponents that young prospects fight when they’re on the way up. However, Hughie’s shots were bouncing off of these guys, and not looking nearly powerful enough for me to see him as a future talent. Hughie did stop Olubamiwo and Zarate early on, but he had to really load up with everything he had to get the stoppage. It wasn’t just casual punching like Deontay Wilder does to get his knockouts.
Fury had to really put everything he had in the shots. It’s not easy to fight like that when you face the higher level heavyweights in the division. If you try and load up with something big from a mile away the way young Hughie was doing, you’re going to get knocked clean out. I’d hate for that to happen to Hughie. That’s why I think he needs to hit the weights in a serious way to try and put some muscles on his frame. His upper body looks more like a computer technician than a fighter in my view. He needs to change that by bulking up.
Comments are closed.