By Sean McDaniel: With three consecutive losses in a row, Big John McderMott (25-6, 16 KO’s) will be looking to break that string of defeats on Friday night against the unbeaten 6’7″ Tyson Fury (10-0, 8 KOs) at the Brentwood Centre, Brentwood, Essex. Many boxing fans felt that the 30-year-old McDermott did more than enough last time out in his fight against Fury to get the decision. The two fought last September, and Fury won a controversial 10 round decision by the scores of 98-92.
In looking at the fight for a second time, it’s hard to see what referee Terry O’Conner was looking at when he decided to score it so much in Fury’s favor. If anything, I could see it going to Fury by a narrow, but still controversial decision, but that’s about it.
On Friday night, McDermott and Fury will be fighting for the vacant BBBofC English heavyweight title. Fury, 22, has started off his career with a massive amount of hype about him, because of his huge size and seemingly good punching power. Fury breezed through his first seven fights, knocking out all his opponents within four rounds or less. Fury, however, has looked much less impressive since last year when he stepped up to fight McDermott.
Fury’s power no longer looks devastating and his technique is lacking, especially on defense. Fury has problems blocking punches and gets hit a lot when he’s facing an opponent with any kind of offensive skills. Fury’s defense is really is offense, which is probably why he was able to disguise his defensive liabilities for so long. Now his flaws are getting exposed in his fights and he’s not looking good on offense either.
For Fury to win this fight on Saturday, he’s going to have to block more punches and show better power on offense. Fury looked weak and weight drained in his fight with McDermott last time out. That could be that Fury over-trained or he could really be a weak puncher. He does punch well to the body, but the problem is he leaves his head open when he goes to the body.
McDermott was able to land straight hands all night long whenever Fury try to go to the body against him. Fury needs to set up his shots and try cover up quickly when in close. He’s really too tall to be fighting on the inside and he needs to learn how to use his height and reach more. Fury negates his reach too often in his fights while trying to fight in close. It didn’t matter when Fury was fighting C level opponents, but now that he’s facing B quality heavyweights like McDermott, Fury is getting badly exposed by him.
McDermott intends on taking the fight to Fury all night long and trying to wear him down like last time. McDermott showed good stamina for most of the fight, and was able to work hard until the last two rounds when McDermott appeared to run out of gas and clinch a lot. I suspect that McDermott will run out of gas again late in the fight. However, if he has a big enough lead it may not matter.
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