By Scott Gilfoid: If former heavyweight champion Tyson Fury is going to be able to successfully make a comeback in the near future, then he’s going to need to burn off a lot of excess weight in order to do it. The 28-year-old Fury says he’s currently weighing 350 pounds. He feels that he’s going to burn through the weight to resume his career. We’re talking about Fury losing roughly 100 lbs. for him to get back down to his normal fighting weight of 250.
“Talk about being a fat man, I’m 25 stones or 350lbs, but getting the weight off has never been a problem! Ask Peter Fury we done it 24 times,” Fury said. “I’ve moved on from the dark and scary place I’ve been living & if I can beat depression then I can beat anything! The hardest fight of my life! I’m starting a fresh start, letting go of the past and concentrating on the future, got to keep moving forwards.”
You have to wonder why Fury is revealing the news of him weighing 350. Is he a glutton for punishment or is he going to use the criticism as motivation for him to burn off all that lard. When you’ve got that much fat you’re carrying around, the last thing you need is to drive yourself into the ground burning it off. Fury needs to take the weight off in a strategic way rather than going overboard to burn it all off.
This is terrible that Fury has let himself go to this point to get this heavy. I hate to say it but I can’t see Fury ever burning all that blubber off to be the fighter that he once was. When you see a person that has to loss 100 lbs., they often look weak after they take the weight off. It’s good that Fury is going to lose the weight, but it’s going to be next to impossible in my opinion for him to fight at the same level as he was in his last fight against Wladimir Klitschko in 2015. Just how much will Fury be impacted from losing 100 lbs. of flab is anyone’s guess.
Former heavyweight champion James Jeffries lost 110 lbs. to get down to 226 lbs. for his comeback fight against Jack Johnson in 1910. Jeffries ballooned up to 330 lbs. after being retired for 5 years. His old fighting weight was around 230. Jeffries was no competition for Johnson in their fight on July 4, 1910. Johnson toyed with a very weak looking Jeffries before stopping him in the 15th round. Jeffries then retired permanently. I can see Fury coming back for one fight and winding up getting stopped just like Jeffries was against Johnson. I’m just saying. That’s a good reason why Fury needs to be very, very selective in whom he picks as his first and likely his last opponent of his career when he does comeback to boxing.
If Fury is smart, he’ll sit back and wait until he can get a title shot against IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. I wouldn’t even fight a scrub in a tune-up bout if I were Fury, because he’ll likely lose the fight or looked dreadful. Fury can’t afford to look dreadful if he wants to get the boxing public to be interested in paying to see him fight Joshua. We’re talking about a mismatch on part with the Jack Johnson vs. James Jeffries fight of 1910.
Two-time heavyweight champion George Foreman was aid to have gotten as high as 350 lbs. before he decided to make his comeback in the late 1980s after being out of the ring for 10 years. However, Foreman was never able to take all the weight off that he’d put on in being out of the ring. When Foreman was his prime in the first part of his career, he weighed between 217 and 229. When Foreman returned to the ring after a long 10-year layoff in 1987, he weighed 267 pounds in beating Steve Zouski. Foreman got as low as 235 lbs. for his fight against Dwight Mohammad Qawi in 1988, but he didn’t feel as strong at that weight as he had at the heavier weights. From that point on, Foreman was fighting from the 240s to the 250s.
The high weight for Fury during his career was 274 lbs. for his fight against Joey Abell in 2014. Fury won that fight by 4th round knockout, but he did not look good in doing so. He was getting hit back by a fighter that was little more than a journeyman level fighter. Fury had to lose a lot of weight to get down to the 274 for the Abell fight, but he was also three years younger than he is now. Fury is about to turn 29-years-old. It’s more difficult for a fighter to lose a ton of weight at near 30 than it is when they’re only 26. It’s a different story.
My advice or Fury is for him to lose the weight slowly and not all at once in one training camp. Fury should return to the ring in the 280s, and then make 10 pound adjustments with each fight until he gets down to 250. If he goes straight to 250 for his first fight back, I see him being very weak and not effective. That’s too much to lose at time.
Hopefully, Fury doesn’t take the weight off the wrong way because it’s dangerous potentially to lose a lot of weight at once. It needs to be done slowly. Fury needs to make sure that he’s eating enough protean and fat to keep his heart healthy while taking the weight off. You have to look at it logically. It took Fury 2 years to put all that weight on. He needs to take it off slowly so that he does wind up too weak to fight. Fury needs to hire a quality nutritionist that he can help plan his meals and monitor his weight loss during the process. If Fury limits his calories too much, he’ll wind up losing muscle weight along with the fat. Fury will end up a weak 250 after he gets all the weight off.