By Scott Gilfoid: British heavyweight champion Sam Sexton (24-3, 9 KOs) weighed in at 235 pounds on Friday for his defense against challenger Hughie Fury (20-1, 10 KOs) on Saturday night at the Macron Stadium, Bolton. Hughie has made it clear that if he wins the title, he won’t defend it against Joe Joyce. Hughie will be moving on towards another world title shot.
The 23-year-old Hughie weighed in at 232 pounds. Both guys looked in good shape. It wasn’t a case of one looking better than the other. Hughie is 3 lbs. lighter than Sexton, and three inches taller. Hughie needs to put some muscle on his frame. Of course, if he did that, he would likely slow down his ability to move around the ring, and it would make him vulnerable to his opponents. A large part of Hughie’s game is centered on his ability to move away from his opponents. If you take away Hughie’s movement, then his goose could be cooked.
Hughie says he’s going to be knocking on IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua’s door with a win over Sexton on Saturday. It’s good to be hopeful, but Hughie sounds deluded at this point.
“I believe I’ll be world champion so I want to get through beating Sexton and then look to force a mandatory shot as soon as possible,” Hughie said.
Sexton has a real chance to win this fight. He’s the bigger puncher, faster, better defensively, and a lot more aggressive. The 6’3” Sexton has everything going for him except for his size and age. Sexton is 10 years older than Hughie at 33, and he’s giving away a lot of reach. That doesn’t mean that Sexton can’t win. In Sexton’s last fight against the 6’7” Gary Cornish, he got in close and worked him over with left hooks, uppercuts and right hands to win a close 12 round unanimous decision last October. That was a good performance by Sexton. He gave it his all to beat the much bigger Cornish, and it paid off with him winning narrowly. Some would say that Hughie is a better fighter than Cornish. I don’t know that he is. They’re both very similar in talent. Cornish is older than Hughie at 31, and he has more pop in his punches.
If Hughie does become a mandatory for IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua of WBC champ Deontay Wilder, it might take a while. Sexton is not the level that Hughie should be fighting for him to get moved swiftly up the ranks. Hughie needs to be fighting guys like Jarrell Miller, Dillian Whyte, Dereck Chisora, and Kubrat Pulev. If Hughie beats those types of heavyweights, he’ll receive a mandatory spot in no time flat. It’s not going to work for Hughie if he gets beaten badly by them, and then he ignores the judges’ scores and tells the fans that he should have been given the win.
Hughie is taking his career backwards in going to the British level after he lost his last fight to WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker. This is a move that Hughie should have taken before he fought for a world title, not after.
Hughie says he’s still improving and hasn’t reached his prime yet. For some reason, his power is not developing. Hughie is getting older, but he his power hasn’t developed at all, and he’s spending most of the time running from his opponents. It’s just a waste of his career, because he should be hitting the weights to try and come up with some punching power. If Hughie was a bodybuilder like Anthony Joshua, then maybe he could punch a little in the early rounds before tiring out the way AJ does.
Hughie takes pride in that he doesn’t talk trash about his opponents ahead of their fights. Hughie just wants to take high road and refrain from letting his opponents have it before he faces them. That might be one reason why it’s so hard to get excited about Hughie’s fights. He’s always being so nice to his opponents, and it’s almost as if he’s not even fighting. It wouldn’t hurt for Hughie to let the boxing public know what he really thinks about his opposition.
“Some people try and play mind games and get under each other’s skin and sometimes it can work but I’m not really interested in it. I only care about what happens in the ring,” Hughie said. “It’s crazy what a defeat can do you. It makes you that bit more hungry and I want to get back up to that top as soon as possible. You’ll see a different performance and a different fighter,” Hughie said.
It’ll be good for the fans if Hughie is hungry for this fight, because he didn’t look at all hungry in his last fight against Parker. Hughie fought like he thought he was he champion, and that the judges would just give him the victory based on him doing the minimal amount of fighting.
Hughie is coming off of a world title against former WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker last September. Hughie put in just a token effort in trying to win the fight. It looked like the 6’6” Hughie came to the fight with just one goal in mind and that was to survive to hear the final bell in round 12. Picking the winner of the fight was a breeze. Considering that Fury made no real attempt at winning, the judges had to give Parker by the scores 118-110, 118-110 and 114-114.
The judge that scored it a draw, Rocky Young from the United States, was criticized by a lot of boxing fans for his odd scoring of the fight. Hughie should have lost the fight on all three of the scores in my opinion. He didn’t put in any real effort to try and win it, and the only thing I can think of is Hughie was scared of Parker. He didn’t want to get hit by one of Parker’s hard right hands and left hooks, so he stayed on the run for 12 rounds, and then made a big fuss afterwards when two of the judges failed to give him the win. Hughie was fighting at home at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. The judges weren’t going to just give it to Hughie based on the running that he was doing.
I think Sexton could wind this fight on Saturday. If Hughie loses the fight, then he needs to think seriously about retiring from the sport, because I don’t see where he can go from here. To be viewed a future world champion, Hughie must because Sexton and beat him with ease. David Price and Dereck Chisora both stopped Sexton with ease in 2012 and 2010 respectively. Sexton was younger and a better fighter back then compared to the way he fights now.
