By Tim Royner: At Friday’s weigh-in, Tyson Fury told his Snickers eating opponent Tom Schwarz that he’ll be stopping him in the first round tonight in their fight at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas, Nevada. When the two giant heavyweights stood for the stare down, Fury barked continually at the calm and tranquil looking 25-year-old Schwarz (24-0, 16 KOs).
All the trash talking that Fury, 30, is doing towards his obscure opponent Schwarz makes him look bad unfortunately, considering that the fans already view the Fury-Schwarz contest as a horrendous mismatch. As such, all Fury (27-0-1, 19 KOs) is doing by trash talking Schwarz is lessening the interest in fight, and taking away the credit that he’ll get from fans afterwards. This match is a no-win situation for Fury, because the knowledgeable boxing fans view it as showcase fight for him. Fury turned down a rematch with WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder.
Fury taunts Schwarz during face off
Despite calling Schwarz names, and vowing to KO him in round one, Fury was unable to get the German fighter to cringe and show the fear that he was trying to get him display at yesterday’s weigh-in. If anything, Schwarz seemed to be enjoying Fury’s trash talking, as he smiled and beamed at the attention he was getting. However given that English isn’t Schwarz’s primary language, it’s unclear how much he actually understood of what Fury was saying to him during the stare down. Fury was talking, but Schwarz likely was only hearing meaningless gibberish from him. The English that Schwarz used during interviews this week was one or two words at a time. He knows how to say, “Snicker” obviously. It’ll be interesting to see if Schwarz can get an endorsement deal with the producers of Snickers after this fight.
Yesterday, Fury said he’s knocking out Schwarz in “One round” tonight. Schwarz seems to have other ideas. Schwarz’s decision to pull out a Snickers candy bar and start eating it while Fury was barking at him seems to suggest that he plans on following the same script of Andy Ruiz Jr. in pulling off a huge upset of a British heavyweight. Earlier this month, Ruiz Jr. shockingly knocked out IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua in the first round on June 1 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Ruiz Jr. came into the fight with Joshua as a huge underdog, but he upset the odds-makers by knocking AJ down four times before the British fighter stopped fighting in the seventh.
Schwarz 17.5 pounds lighter than Fury
At the weigh-in, Schwarz came in at 245.5 pounds, which is the highest of his short six-year career. For his part, Fury weighed in almost 20 pounds heavier at 263 pounds. That’s 17.5 pounds more than Schwarz, but it’s a different kind of weight. Fury has a lot of extra fat on him that isn’t going to help him in the fight. It’s the first fight since Fury’s launched his comeback in in 2018 that his weight has gone up instead of down. In Fury’s first fight of his comeback after two and half years out of the ring, he weighed 276 pounds for his fight against 39-year-old cruiserweight Sefer Seferi last year in June 2018.
In Fury’s next fight against former heavyweight world title challenger Francesco Pianeta, his weight dropped to 258 pounds. Fury still looked out of shape and fat at that weight, but he appeared to be in considerably better condition than he had in his comeback bout with Seferi. In Fury’s title shot against WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder last December, he got his weight down to 256 pounds, and looked and fought even better than he had in his two previous outings.
In the Wilder fight, Fury started off well in the first seven rounds, but he tired out and become more stationary in the second half of the fight. Without the movement, which had kept Fury from getting knocked out in the hard part of the fight, he was a sitting duck for Wilder in the second half of the contest.
The Bronze Bomber took advantage of Fury’s stamina problems by knocking him down twice in the championship rounds. Fury won’t admit it, but he was knocked out in the 12th. The referee gave a count to Fury, and he was able to barely get up, but the fight likely would have been stopped by most referees. Fury lucked out that Jack Reiss was the referee for the fight, because the fight might have turned out differently with another referee at the helm.
Fury’s weight for his four fights since coming back:
– 276 pounds vs. Sefer Seferi
– 258 lbs. vs. Francesco Pianeta
– 256 lbs. vs. Deontay Wilder
– 263 lbs. vs. Tom Schwarz
Fury’s weight increasing for his fight with Schwarz gives a big hint to the boxing public that he didn’t train as hard for this fight as he did in his two previous bouts against Wilder and Pianeta. To be sure, Schwarz isn’t on the same level as Wilder in terms of talent or power, but he’s better than Pianeta and Seferi. Fury isn’t a good enough fighter for him to be overlooking anyone at this point.
Fury isn’t a knockout puncher
It could be a mistake on Fury’s part to go looking for a knockout tonight, because he’ll leave himself open to getting clipped by one of Schwarz’s shots if he goes in their looking for an early KO. However, Fury might need the fight to be over with quickly, because his stamina problems could come into play if Schwarz doesn’t disappear in the early rounds. Assuming Fury gasses out against Schwarz early on, he could have problems in the second half of the fight like he did in the Wilder fight last December. Fury has done a lot of sparring for this fight, and he probably knows that doesn’t want to be in there too long with Schwarz. He doesn’t want this fight to be a grueling one in which his conditioning is exposed like it was in his fight with Wilder.
Fury looked bad against Wilder when he got tired in the second half of the fight, because he was just standing in front of him on weak legs, trying to make him miss with his upper body only. Fury’s offense, which consisted largely of slapping punches, had disappeared by the later rounds. He was mostly just trying to dodge Wilder’s huge punches by rotating his torso instead of using his feet like he’d been doing. Schwarz is going to take Fury into the deeper waters tonight to try and drown him. That’s Schwarz’s best plan for winning tonight, because he’s not going to out-box Fury.
Tom Schwarz needs a knockout to win
Schwarz freely admits it that he needs a knockout to win. Fury is too good of a boxer for Schwarz to win a decision, and he knows it. Moreover, Schwarz is the visiting fighter, even though both heavyweights are from the U.S. Fury’s co-promoters at Top Rank Boxing are staging the fight in Las Vegas, and they’re working overtime attempting to turn him into a star there. Schwarz is never going to beat Fury by boxing him for 12 rounds. There’s too wide of a gulf in ability in that department for the German heavyweight to beat Fury like that.