John Fury has seen the physical decline in his son, WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury’s last three performances and he’s worried about him potentially heading towards disaster going into his next fight against IBF/WBA/WBO champ Oleksandr Usyk on February 17th.
The 35-year-old Fury (33-0-1, 24 KOs) has gone from being the mobile fighter who danced around the ring, beating Wladimir Klitschko in 2015, to the fat, sluggish plodder who throws weak jabs and then grabs his opponents and leans on them.
Fury’s fighting style has become rudimentary & journeymen-like, and his physical conditioning is even worse. His physique is loaded with fat, making you wonder whether his trainer SugarHill Steward, has been doing with him.
Should Tyson dump his trainer?
It’s pretty clear that Fury needs to dump SugarHill and his whole training team and start from new, with some coaches that will refurbish him in time for his bout with the slick Usyk in February.
Bring back Ben Davison, plant him in the kitchen to keep him from raiding the refrigerator, and control his eating. You hate to say it, but Fury resembles a hog, and he’s going to be humiliated by the well-schooled & conditioned Usyk.
Any coach worth his salt wouldn’t let a fighter who looked like Fury into the ring, yet this is what’s been happening for the last two years with Tyson.
It’s unclear whether even Davison can save Fury in time for his fight with Usyk, as he’s so incredibly rich that he’s at the point where it would be risky to tell him to get up off his backside and do some work without worrying about getting fired & banned from the gym.
How long would Davison or any quality trainer last if they told Fury to stop stuffing cakes & pies into his food vacuole and start working? This is how it goes with fighters that become rich.
The last time Fury looked halfway decent was three years ago when he defeated Deontay Wilder in their second fight by a seventh round knockout in 2020, and he didn’t even look that great.
John Fury says Tyson’s style won’t do against Usyk
“In his last three fights, I have seen a bit of decline, a decline in strength, power, and physical condition. You have to address it. He didn’t look himself out in Saudi,” said John Fury to the Metro about his son Tyson Fury’s dreadful performance against Francis Ngannou.
John Fury is understating his problems with Fury by saying he’s only seen a “bit of decline” because he’s been physically declining for the last three years.
His fighting style is a slob one, involving mostly grabbing & leaning. That’s why Francis Ngannou enjoyed so much success against him.
Any MMA fighter would have done very well against Fury because he mostly just grabs & leans on his opponents nowadays, and his style is right up the alley of MMA guys with their wrestling backgrounds.
Basically, Fury has become a simple grappler-type fighter since teaming up with SugarHill, and that approach will only work against certain fighters, who have meager talent and/or pencil-thin legs, like Deontay Wilder.
It wouldn’t be a problem if Fury had only used the mauling style against Wilder, Dillian Whyte & Dereck Chisora, as those guys are limited fighters that lack talent, but the fact that Tyson is STILL using that approach, it means that he’s stuck in that style and can’t change.
“The style I am seeing is no good. The style Tyson has right now, he wouldn’t have beaten Wladimir Klitschko with that,” said John Fury. “Oleksandr Usyk is a tricky man. The style he’s got now won’t do the trick.”
With the way Fury fights now, he won’t be able to get his mitts around Usyk to wrap him up in a clinch to use his leaning & mauling approach. Fury will be plodding around, trying to grab Usyk, and getting hit with sharp punches.
We saw that in Fury’s fight with Ngannou. He was trying to grab and getting nailed repeatedly with left hooks. Fury looked like a blind man in the ring, trying to grab Ngannou to have a good wrestle. It was pathetic.
“He didn’t look right; everything had changed about him, his demeanor, his body. He said he had been training, but there is training, and there is training,” said John Fury.
Eddie Hearn notes decline in Fury
“It’s very difficult for him to be the type of fighter that he was against Klitschko. How long ago was that? Ten years,” said Eddie Hearn to Secondsout about Tyson Fury having aged and can’t fight like he did against Wladimir Klitschko in 2015.
It’s safe to say that Fury can’t return to the fighter he was eight years ago when he danced around the ring against a past-his-prime, rudderless 39-year-old Wladimir. Too many years have gone by, and Fury has aged considerably since 2015.
Obviously, the rich foods and expensive drinks that he’s enjoyed have accelerated his physical aging. When eating high on the hog and enjoying the best drink, you’re not going to be able to keep the trim physique you once had.
Even in that fight, it was close, and the more meaningful punches were landed by the powerful Klitschko. Fury was able to land enough slapping shots to impress the judges against the gunshy, confused & timid-looking Wladimir that night.
In hindsight, if Wladimir had fought with aggression, he would have won, but he no longer had his trainer, Emanuel Steward, in his corner to light a fire under his backside to motivate him to fight with aggression. Steward had passed away in 2012.
“He’s not going to be that same fighter, and you can’t work off reactions against Usyk if your reactions aren’t there or aren’t the same,” Hearn continued. So maybe he has to use his size, maybe he has to impose himself on Usyk, but that’s very difficult.
“I think he’s a little bit lost in styles, but maybe his confidence in his reactions, speed and movement isn’t the same,” said Hearn about Fury.
There are some fighters in the heavyweight division that Fury can beat using his current fighting style and being flabby with the way he is, but unfortunately, Usyk isn’t one of them. So, without Fury making huge changes to his physique & fighting style, he’s heading for his first career loss on February 17th.
