By Charles Brun: Carl Froch is one of many who feel that Tyson Fury will be more hurt by the delay of the trilogy fight than former WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder.
Interestingly, Froch failed to touch on the sparring rumors involving Fury in which he’s said to have been getting beaten up by the young guns Jared Anderson and Efe Ajagba, the two guys he’d been using to train with for the Wilder fight.
It would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall during those sparring sessions between Fury and the young phenom Anderson and the devastating puncher Ajagba.
The rumors are that the 24-year-old Anderson knocked Fury out during sparring and that he’d been taking a battering. If the rumors are true, that would certainly be reason enough for Fury to postpone his fight with Wilder until October or later while he recovers.
Without the 273+lb bulk that Fury had for his rematch with Wilder, it’s easy to visualize Jared Anderson and Ajagba pummeling the light-hitting, atrophied Gypsy King.
The former 168-lb champion Froch believes the ring rust that WBC champion Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) has will only worsen by his fight with the powerful American Deontay (42-1-1, 41 KOs) delayed until October from their previously scheduled July 24th date.
“This delay is definitely going to hurt Fury more [than Wilder],” said Froch to Sky Sports. “They have both been out of the ring for the same amount of time, but Wilder is still going to be hungry; he’s got a point to prove.
“He’s been absolutely ridiculed and written off by loads of people. And he’s been abused really on social media for a long time,” Froch said about Wilder.
As of now, the 32-year-old Fury and Wilder have both been out of the ring for 17 months since their rematch in February 2020. However, the time out of action appears to have hurt the 6’9″ Fury more, as he’s visibly aged in the year and a half.
Fury looks like he’s lost muscle and aged in his face and physique during the time off. What happened to Fury’s muscles? That’s a good question. I guess as the saying goes, ‘If you don’t use it, you lose it,’ applies to Fury.
You hate to say it, but a lot of boxing fans aren’t buying into Fury’s COVID-19 excuse for pulling out of his trilogy match with Deontay.
They think it’s either the rumors of Fury getting beaten up by Anderson and Ajagba or the low-ticket sales that Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing has been talking about as the true reason why the Deontay fight has been postponed.
“Fury could be thinking, ‘Do I really need this?‘” said Froch about a second fight against a highly motivated Deontay.
“But there’s only so much you can keep yourself motivated when you’re not busy, and there’s nothing happening,” said Froch.
When you factor in that the only reason Fury won the fight with Wilder last year was due to him hurting him with a rabbit shot in the third round, it’s easy to think that he might not be confident about the rematch.
Fury’s got to know that the trilogy match with Wilder will have a referee who won’t let him foul like mad with the rabbit shots he got away with last time.
If Fury is being penalized or warned by the referee in the third fight for rabbit punching against Deontay, his chances of winning drop off the side of the map.
Without those rabbit shots, the fight could be like the 12th round of their first fight in which Deontay knocked Fury out cold.
In an odd picture, the referee gave a count while Fury was out cold. It looked like something out of another century. That fight should have been stopped, and Wilder given a knockout victory.