By Allan Fox: Tyson Fury cruised to a 4th round TKO in his comeback contest tonight in forcing former cruiserweight Sefer Seferi to call it quits after round 4 on Saturday night at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. It was Seferi’s corner that decided to have the fight stopped after the 4th round, as he wasn’t competitive and was just taking one-way punishment by the lanky 6’9” Fury.
In truth, Seferi didn’t take that many shots before his corner decided to halt the fight. It looked like they weren’t going to let the fight get too far out of hand before stopping it.
Referee Phil Edwards was annoyed by Fury’s showboating in the first two rounds. He warned Fury to get serious and start fighting. Fury wasn’t paying attention to his opponent Seferi when a fight broke out in the crowd. Fury seemed more interested in watching the fight than he did in his own fight.
Fury was initially in clowning in the 1st round and not letting his hands go to entertain the boxing fans. He looked like he thought he could impress the fans by showboating instead of fighting. Seferi was the more serious of the two, as he was attacking Fury and was able to land some nice right hands to take the round by default.
Fury was coming off of a long stretch of inactivity going into tonight, as he hadn’t fought since beating Wladimir Klitschko by a 12 round unanimous decision in November 2015. Fury didn’t look like the same fighter tonight that had beaten Klitschko. Just how much Fury has lost from his game since then is hard to quantify, but I’d say he appeared to be perhaps 50 percent of the fighter he’d been in the Wladimir fight.
Fury kissed Seferi on his lips before the fight started, and that got things off to a strange start. The day before at the weigh-in on Friday, Fury had picked Seferi up in his arms and held him like he was carrying logs for a fire.
”I felt fantastic, it was like having my debut again,” Fury said after the fight. “I’ve had a long time out the ring and I needed some rounds, so I was taking my time. The calibre of opponents will keep on rising. I will be better next time.”
It’s unclear whether Fury will improve by any measure in his next fight or two. Fury’s problem in tonight’s fight was a lack of hand speed the inability to track the movement of Seferi. When Fury did try and unload, he was missing a lot. Facing a cruiserweight helped Fury look better than he might have been had he fought a heavyweight. It’s safe to say that Fury would have been knocked out tonight if he had fought one of the top heavyweights. Fury has lost too much from his game from soft living.
Fury’s goal for his comeback is to recapture his three heavyweight titles he lost. He’s now gotten one fight under his belt, but he’s going to need to put together a number of fights before he’s ready to challenge for a heavyweight title against Anthony Joshua. Without Fury’s height and reach advantage, he would have been in trouble tonight.
