Carl Froch isn’t holding back on his criticism of the decline he’s seeing from WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury from his recent performances heading into his May 18th undisputed championship match against IBF/WBA/WBO champ Oleksandr Usyk in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Despite the backlash that Froch is receiving from British fans for telling it like it is in his Howard Cossell style, he won’t stay quiet about what he sees in the 35-year-old Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs).
Moreover, he feels that Fury’s five-fight plan is a pipe dream with little chance of happening. It’s a mirage that Fury has dreamed up, considering that his career will likely end on May 18th when he gets outboxed by the more talented, agile, and athletic Usyk (21-0,14 KOs).
Signs of Decline
“I think it was a valid point I made about him slowing down and not throwing many feints, which is what you do before you throw a punch. You throw a little feint,” said Carl Froch said to talkSPORT Boxing, talking about Tyson Fury showing signs of decline at 35.
Earth to Froch. Fury has been slowing down for the last three years, but he’s disguised by using his mauling and facing weak opposition, Deontay Wilder, Dillian Whyte, and Dereck Chisora.
“He’s been down on the floor four or five times in the last 70 rounds of fighting, and he’s getting older. He puts a lot of weight on between fights,” said Froch. “He’s been up to 26 stone. He doesn’t go that heavy now, but he carries a lot of weight around his stomach and love handles around the break basket. He puts a bit of timber on.
Those fights against Wilder didn’t help Fury in terms of his reflexes and ability. They took a lot out of him. What hurt Fury even more was celebrating that he did in between fighting, putting on weight, and fighting irregularly against exclusively weak opposition.
The Struggle With Conditioning
“When you get a bit older when you get to 35 or 36. I retired at 36 because it was hard for me to make 12 stone,” said Froch. “I know he doesn’t have to make a weight because he’s heavyweight and hie can weight what he wants, but he does have an optimal fight weight, which is around 18 1/2 stone.
Five More Fights? Unrealistic Hopes
“So, he needs to get down to around that if he wants to be at his best. I just think it’s harder to get to that weight when you get older. He’s talking about fighting five times. I don’t know how realistic that is. I hope he can do the business against Usyk and unify the belts and become undisputed heavyweight champion,” said Froch.
Fury’s vision of fighting five more times has no chance of happening because he would need to defeat Usyk twice, Anthony Joshua twice, and Francis Ngannou.
At this point, Fury loses all five fights unless he’s saved repeatedly with controversial scoring like we saw last October in his fight with Ngannou. That can’t happen, though, as the Saudis would be the laughingstock of the world if Fury is given repeated controversial decisions.
If the Saudis want to give Fury a ton of money to bring him back after a loss to make Anthony Joshua fight for old-time’s sake, they’ll likely persuade him.
It probably wouldn’t be a good idea if they did this. It would be better to let the victor, Usyk, be the one that faces Joshua rather than the loser, but they obviously want to see Fury-Joshua under any circumstances, and I mean ANY. So, a loss for Fury probably won’t stop the Saudis from cramming the Joshua fight down the fans’ throats.
