Jeff Mayweather says Deontay Wilder must stay outside against Tyson Fury to win

By Boxing News - 10/06/2021 - Comments

By Allan Fox: Jeff Mayweather says Deontay Wilder will need to stay on the outside against WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury on Saturday night for him to have a chance of winning their trilogy match.

Mayweather believes that Saturday’s third fight between the unbeaten Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) and former champion Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) will duplicate last year’s rematch with a lot of mauling from Tyson.

Jeff expects Fury, 33, to grab Wilder in clinches and lean his 270+ lb weight on him to tire his legs as he did a year ago.

Wilder mistakenly blamed his early fatigue on his legs being exhausted from the ring-walk costume he wore, but the real culprit was Fury’s constant clinching & leaning that he did.

If you watch a replay of the Fury vs. Wilder 2 fight, you see Tyson repeatedly grabbing Wilder in clinches in the first four rounds and putting all his weight on him to tire out his legs.

It was only after Wilder’s legs were sufficiently weakened that Fury started opening up with his offense because he had nothing to fear from him at that point.

Wilder can win if he stays on the outside

“I slightly lean towards him, but I still don’t count Wilder out for knocking him out,” Jeff Mayweather said to Boxing Social on the Fury vs. Wilder III trilogy match.

“At any point, Wilder can knock you out at any point in the fight. I think it’s going to be a great fight, a great fight more for the fans than the last fight.

“I expect to see a lot of what I saw in the second fight,” said Mayweather in predicting the Fury vs. Wilder 3 fight will play out like the second one.

“This time around, in order for Wilder to be successful, he’s going to have to actually have to box a little bit. He’s going to have to use his range, use his height, and he’s going to have to stay on the outside.

“The last fight with Fury, it was a maul. All he did was get in there, and Tyson Fury would put all that weight on him, and basically, he tired himself out. He [Wilder] got beat by strategy. He didn’t get beat by technique. And he got beat by strategy.

“So, hopefully, this time around, if he fights on the outside and stays on the outside and boxes a little bit, he’s got a great chance of winning,” said Jeff about what Deontay must do for him to win.

It’s going to be next to impossible for Wilder to keep Fury from grabbing him and mauling at every chance he can get.

Unless Wilder’s punch accuracy is high, he’s going to get grabbed by Fury, and he’ll have to support all that weight from the 270+ lb behemoth.

A fighter with excellent accuracy like Oleksandr Usyk would likely pick Fury apart and keep him from using his size to grab, but not Wilder. His accuracy is too poor.

Mayweather leaning towards Fury winning

“I do think either guy can win. I mean, of course, everyone knows that Deontay Wilder only needs one punch to change the outcome,”  said Mayweather.

Image: Jeff Mayweather says Deontay Wilder must stay outside against Tyson Fury to win

“The one thing I don’t like is Deontay Wilder hasn’t had a fight in between [his loss to Fury in 2020]. Even though all this new stuff looks good, when you haven’t had a chance to use that in the ring on fight night, I think once the heat gets started, I think you go back to the old things that you do.

“Without him  [Deontay] doing them in the ring [it won’t work]. Sparring is totally different from being in an actual fight,” Jeff Mayweather continued.

“I think if he was in an actual fight and was able to duplicate everything that he was showing every one of what he’s doing on YouTube, I think he’d have a great chance of winning this fight.

“But just seeing him [Wilder] hit the mitts, it’s not enough for me. So I lean slightly for Fury because I think Fury is technically sound a better fighter all the way around complete. But I do think Wilder has the best chance of knocking out anybody,” said Jeff.

Image: Jeff Mayweather says Deontay Wilder must stay outside against Tyson Fury to win

“I think it’s going to be a good fight for the fans. If I had a gun pointed at my head, I would slightly lean towards Tyson Fury. But I think Wilder has a great chance of winning as well,” Mayweather said.

The intelligent choice is to go with Fury winning on Saturday because he knows how to beat Wilder by mauling him with his size and leaning all his weight on him.

It’s fair to say that each time Fury gets near Wilder, he’s going to wrap him in a tight bearhug and lean on him with all his weight to wear down his legs.

That strategy worked well for Fury last time he fought Wilder in 2020, and it’s a given we’ll see the same thing on Saturday. Wilder’s only chance of winning is to stay on the move, hit Fury with precise punches, and don’t let him grab.

If Fury starts clinching repeatedly, Wilder will need to make him hesitant by walloping him while being held.

Some fighters make it challenging to hold them because they fight in the clinch, but Wilder isn’t one of them. That should have been something his rookie coach Malik Scott worked on in camp, but it isn’t very likely.

Deontay should have taken a tune-up

“I don’t know a whole lot about Malik Scott, so I’m not going to judge someone I’ve never seen. But I think he has a great fighter [Wilder] he’s working with, and the things that I’ve seen him do, he’s working with Wilder more with his left hand than his right hand.

“So if you can get Wilder to be a more balanced fighter, it gives him a much better chance to win. I mean, I think he’s doing a good job.

That’s why I say there should have been a fight in between,” said Mayweather when asked about the body shots Wilder has been seen throwing while working with his new coach Malik Scott.

“In the beginning, he [Wilder] may try it, and it may work, and it may not, but the one thing is this. If he had tried it already, he would have known if it worked or not.

“But he’s going in there with this big trilogy fight the third time, and he’s going to try and do something that’s brand new for him. I’m hoping it works for him [Deontay] that it did on YouTube.

“It looks phenomenal, but looks don’t mean anything until the actual event happens. We all are creatures of habit,” said Mayweather. “Once it gets hot in that ring, he’s [Wilder] going back to this [his right hand].

“I think if he goes back to his one big punch to try and knock Tyson Fury out, Tyson has great defense, a great chin. He’s going to be very tough to knock out,” said Jeff.

The problem that prevented Wilder from taking a tune-up was that he had the rematch clause, which Fury attempted to walk away from the fight.

Fury had zero interest in fighting Wilder again, as he didn’t want the risk because if he loses, he can forget about facing Anthony Joshua. That massive money fight for Fury.

Wilder wouldn’t have gotten the rematch with Fury if not for the U.S arbitrator ordering the fight, and even then, it was delayed due to Tyson coming down with COVID-19.

There was no way that Wilder could have taken a tune-up fight because Fury would have walked away.

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