By Charles Brun: Former IBF, WBA, WBC & WBO heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe says he’d have attacked Tyson Fury’s body & broken his ribs if he’d had fought during his era in the early 1990s.
The 1988 U.S Olympian Bowe (43-1, 33 KOs) says Fury’s opposition isn’t attacking his midsection, which allows him to stand tall and use his herky-jerky style to defeat them.
Bowe says that style wouldn’t fly against him because he would go after Fury’s ample midsection and stop the herky-jerky stuff in its tracks.
Nowadays, Fury’s style of fighting is essentially to throw a punch and then dive in to clinch & lean all his weight on his opponents to tire them.
Fury has one of the most one-dimensional styles in the heavyweight division, but he gets away with it because of his size and the weak opposition he fights. The only good fighter Fury fought was Deontay Wilder, and he arguably was knocked out twice by him.
With Bowe’s devasting uppercut that he used to throw from close range, he’d take Fury’s head off in short order if he deserted to his punch & maul style against him.
“There are things he does that if in my era, that jerky-jerky style [wouldn’t have worked]. The thing is, if he jerky-jerky with me, I’m going to pop him and guys aren’t doing that,” said Riddick Bowe to iD Boxing about Tyson Fury.
“If they did it, they would beat him,” Bowe continued about his belief that Fury can be beaten if his opponents attacked his midsection. “I’d have jabbed him; then I’d have stepped in and broken a rib or two. Guys aren’t going to his [Fury] body.
“They’re letting him stand strong, he’s keeping his posture, and, as the rounds go on, they aren’t breaking him down.
It’s doubtful whether Bowe would even need to get to the point where he’s attacking Fury’s flabby body, as he would blast him out with an uppercut once he starts trying to clinch, as he does non-stop nowadays.
“They’re not busting his heart, stopping his liver. You’ve got to do the things that will make him tired. They’re not doing that,” said Bowe about Fury’s opponents fighting the wrong way against him.
The 6’5″ Bowe wonders why Fury’s opposition isn’t attacking his midsection, and the reason for that is simple.
Fury hasn’t fought body punchers during his career, and the guys he has competed against were a badly flawed bunch who had no clue how to fight other than to aim at Fury’s head.
That’s the wrong way to fight Fury because he moves his head a lot, making it difficult to nail him properly. Once a fighter misses, Fury grabs them in a bear hug and begins to lean on them with all his weight.
It’s very simple what Fury does, and so, so ugly to watch. He’s gamed the system, as a good referee would disqualify him for all his clinching, but he gets away with it.
During Bowe’s era, fighters could never clinch him the way Fury does because he’s hit them with an uppercut while being held, and the fight could be over on the spot.
In this era, the only fighter that knows how to throw a good uppercut is Anthony Joshua, but Fury hasn’t fought him because the Gypsy King foiled their negotiations by setting bizarre deadlines.
Some say Fury purposefully messed up the negotiations with AJ because he doesn’t fancy the fight, knowing what could happen if he went through with it.
Fury’s next opponent, Oleksandr Usyk, is too small for him to bang him to the body because if he gets close enough to do that, he’s going to be grabbed & leaned on. If Usyk had more size like Bowe or Joe Joyce, he could handle being grabbed by Fury and mauled the way he does.