By Scott Gilfoid: Tyson Fury sent Anthony Joshua a message of support today in encouraging him to defeat former heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko tonight in their big mega-fight at Wembley Stadium in London, England. Fury’s pep talk to Joshua had a self-serving motive, as he told he wants to fight him the “biggest fight of the century.” Fury believes the two of them would make the biggest fight British boxing history, and he wants Joshua to make sure he gets past the 41-year-old Klitschko so the two of them can make the fight happen.
Fury, 29, is currently in Spain working on getting in shape for a potential fight on June 8 on the undercard of the Billy Joe Saunders vs. Avtandil Khurtsidze card in London, England. It’s doubtful that Fury will have his boxing license to fight by that point, but it’s possible. Fury has a lot of weight to lose before he’ll be ready to fight again.
Fury reportedly weighs 365 pounds right now. He would need to lose between 105 to 115 lbs. for him to be in good enough condition to have a chance at beating Joshua. Fury has to lose a TON of weight to get in good enough condition to resume his stalled out boxing career. It wouldn’t be the best news for Joshua if Fury gets beaten in a tune-up fight before they face each other. That’s certainly a very real possibility if Fury doesn’t burn off all the weight he’s put on before he makes his eventual comeback.
“This is a message to your, Anthony Joshua,” said Tyson Fury in a direct message to Joshua on his Instagram on Saturday. “I just want to say good luck, pal. Do the business on the Ukrainian [expletive]. Knock him the spark out. I wish you all the luck in the world. Let’s make the biggest fight in British boxing history, the real biggest fight. You know how it is between the gypsy king and Anthony Joshua. Get through this test and let’s do it. God bless you both, and hope you both make it out of the ring safe and sound to your families. Good luck, boys. May he best man win,” said Fury.
Fury is wise to target Joshua for a fight. Wladimir cannot afford to waste another 2-years of his career waiting for Fury to finally make it into the ring for a rematch between them. Wladimir wasted valuable time in waiting around for a rematch with Fury that never happened. That’s the whole reason why Wladimir hasn’t fought in a year and a half. He’d been waiting for Fury to make it back into the ring. Fury never did unfortunately.
Moving forward, the 41-year-old Wladimir needs to make sure he carefully selects his opposition to ensure that he only selects opposition with a good chance of making it into the ring on the scheduled dates for the fight. Wladimir is too old to be dealing with someone that gets injured or has personal problems that causes his fights to be postponed or canceled.
Klitschko is in the position to be the spoiler for the Joshua-Fury fight to keep it from happening in 2017. If Klitschko can beat Joshua, he would be raining on Fury’s parade by temporarily blocking that fight from happening this year. That doesn’t mean the fight won’t happen, because there’s too much money on the line for the Joshua-Fury fight not to happen.
The unbeaten Joshua (18-0, 18 KOs) is the favorite to win tonight with most of the bettors. He’s viewed as a solid pick to win due to the way he’s been stomping his opposition since he turned pro four years ago. The odds-makers assume that Joshua should be able to destroy Klitschko in the same way that he’s been blasting out the guys that have been shoveled into the ring by his promoter Eddie Hearn. If that fails to happen, it would be a real buzz kill for Joshua and Fury.
The clock is ticking on Fury’s career. He’s been out of the ring for almost 2 years now since his win over Wladimir Klitschko in November 2015. Fury probably never thought he would be out of the ring or this long after he beat Wladimir. That was the high point of Fury’s pro boxing career. He was supposed to start making the big money after that in a rematch with Wladimir, and then a big fight against Joshua. Instead, Fury fell apart mentally from all the distractions outside of the ring. Fury’s unhealthy lifestyle also played a major part in him not being able to get back inside the ring. He wasn’t living right, and he let his weight get WAY out of hand in eating and drinking too much.
”All Joshua needs is a fair referee, because if they have one then Klitschko will be disqualified for holding,” said former 2 division world champion David Haye to skysports.com.
I seriously doubt that a referee would dare RUIN the Joshua-Klitschko fight by disqualifying a boxing legend like Klitschko for him clinching too much. Can you imagine what the 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium would do if the referee were to stop the fight due to Wladimir’s clinching? That would be the worst thing that could happen. There will be a lot of people watching the fight tonight. If the referee follows Haye’s advice to disqualify Wladimir, it would not only ruin the fight, it would also keep Joshua from being able to add Wladimir’s scalp to his resume of scalps.
Joshua wouldn’t be able to brag after the fight that he’s the best fighter in boxing because he beat Klitschko. The undercard for tonight’s Joshua-Klitschko card is a pretty horrible one with a lot of mismatches. As such, if the referee disqualifies Wladimir for excessive holding, there wouldn’t be any interesting undercard fights to satisfy the boxing fans.
”Something deep inside me says don’t write him off. This is a man who has come back from losses and knockouts before,” said heavyweight contender Dillian Whyte to skysports.com. ”Selfishly I would like Joshua to win, because it sets up a rematch with me and Joshua, but personally I would like Klitschko to win.”
Dillian Whyte is right about Wladimir having a chance in this fight. Of course, he has a chance. Joshua has never fought anyone as good as Wladimir before, thanks to his promoter Eddie Hearn. We don’t know what Joshua will do in this fight. Joshua hasn’t helped himself by putting on a lot of muscle weight for this fight. Joshua has packed on 20 pounds of muscle weight in the last 4 years, and he seems to heading towards 260. Joshua no longer looks like a boxer. He resembles a body builder more than a fighter.
Wladimir made jokes about Joshua’s physique in the run up to tonight’s fight, saying that he’s starting to look like a body builder. Wladimir is right. Joshua has really gone overboard with his weight lifting. In contrast, Wladimir was smart about his training for tonight’s fight by coming in lean at 240 pounds at last Friday’s weigh-in.
Wladimir is smart, and knows that being light and mobile gives him his best chance of winning the fight. Joshua doesn’t realize that boxing requires conditioning and not just a bunch of weight lifting. It might take an embarrassing loss tonight for Joshua to finally get a clue that he needs to trim off all the useless muscle that he’s put on since he turned pro. Joshua was fine when he weighed 220 lbs. during the Olympics in 2012. I don’t know what happened to Joshua. He just went overboard with the weight lifting since.