By Sean Jones: Heavyweight contender Michael Hunter revealed on Sunday that Tyson Fury was performing well in his training camp before coming down with COVID-19 while training for his July 24th trilogy match with Deontay Wilder. He says Fury didn’t have a bad enough camp to pull out of the fight, in his opinion.
There were already rumors that Fury had been knocked out and battered by his talented sparring partner Jared Anderson during camp. The Top Rank promoted Anderson is a future world champion, and his style of powerful combination punching is all wrong for Fury.
When this writer first heard that Jared Anderson would be used as a sparring partner for Fury, it was obvious that the Gypsy King would have major problems.
Anderson has a fighting style that Fury has never had to deal with in the pro game, and it’s not likely that he ever could.
Fury is like a big version of Chris Byrd, and that’s a guy that did well against big heavyweights that loaded up with single shots. Byrd had excellent defensive skills but was beaten up when he ran into the high-volume puncher Ike Ibeabuchi in 1999.
With Jared Anderson, he throws machine gun-like combinations, and Fury’s game isn’t designed to dodge that kind of incoming firepower.
Hunter thinks it was odd that he was told on the first day of training camp that someone in the team had COVID, and then soon after that, Fury came up with the illness. It was strange, according to Hunter.
Michael adds that he questions whether the Fury vs. Wilder III fight will happen at all due to business and politics stopping it. Hunter didn’t elaborate on what excuses would be used to halt the fight from taking place.
Fury already had COVID, so he can’t trot out that excuse again. Perhaps it’s not too late for Fury’s management to give Wilder a step aside?
It’s possible with the amount of money WBC heavyweight champion Fury can make in a fight against IBF/WBA/WBO champ Anthony Joshua, something will ultimately stop the Fury-Wilder 3 fight from happening because it’s a perilous fight for him.
If Wilder connects with one of his big right-hand shots on Fury’s jaw, he could knock him out. A loss for Fury would be bad for the sport of boxing as a whole, and it would impact the promotional companies Matchroom and Top Rank.
Fury had a bad camp
“We do know he wasn’t doing too well in the gym, but not enough to call the fight off,” said Michael Hunter to Fighthype about Fury struggling during camp in preparing for the now postponed trilogy match with Deontay Wilder.
“To me, it was kind of funny because, on the first day, they said ‘somebody on this team got COVID’ and the next thing we heard, Tyson got COVID. So I thought that was a little fishy,” Hunter continued.
“Everybody is using the COVID thing for some type of plagiarism anyway, so it doesn’t surprise me,” said Hunter.
It sounds like Hunter is skeptical about Fury’s COVID 19 excuse for postponing the Wilder fight. Oh well, Hunter isn’t the only one. A good portion of the boxing world believes Fury was never sick with COVID and was only using this as an excuse because he had a terrible training camp.
Also, some believe that ticket sales were abysmal for the fight, so the COVID excuse was created to delay the fight.
Hunter doubts Fury – Wilder 3 will happen
“I’m leaning more towards Fury [over Wilder]. He got a draw in the first fight, which he just got off the couch in his first fight back. Then he won the second fight.
“I can’t talk about all the allegations and all the cheating and stuff. They’re doing a third fight, which is kind of weird, but maybe that was Deontay’s way of getting it back.
“A fighter would always want to do that, so it does make sense. I’m edging it for Tyson Fury. But I don’t know if this fight, it’s so much business, things, and politics going on. It’s very hard to say if these fights are even going to happen.”
We’ll see what the next move will be if they intend on canceling the Fury vs. Wilder 3 fight outright. It’s going to have to be something good that the boxing public will believe.
It would seem quite easy to give Wilder a late step aside to get him out of the way because there’s too much money at stake.
It would be one thing if Fury were fighting a light hitter like Oleksandr Usyk, who he could use his 270+ lb frame to maul like a giant grizzly bear.
That’s not who Fury is fighting. He’s facing a guy with one-punch power in Wilder, and he’s capable of doing a lot of damage if he connects cleanly.
Fury will go to sleep as he did in the first fight, and it’s going to look good if the referee is kneeling over while he’s unconscious again. The image of the referee counting while Fury was unconscious on the canvas looked wrong. What was going on here? Why was Fury being given a count while in the condition he was in?
“I’m going to go get him,” said Hunter about his fight this Tuesday night against Mike Wilson on Triller. “Expect fireworks, and I’m going to go get him and try to get him out of there.