I completely disagree. One of my favorite fights. Long time champion punches air and is completely helpless to reverse it. A chess match.
Nobody was genuinely entertained by that feint fest. I might be one of the only people on this forum that even bothered to rewatch it. Fury won handily in a complete stinker and had Wlad so frustrated that he headbutted him in there. I'd never seen Wlad do anything like that in his entire career.
You know whats strange about Wladimir. He's a great athlete, but a robotic great athlete. Great puncher. But not a great combination puncher. Great mover, but not a great offensive mover.
He's robotic and fights in a rigid fashion. No real creativity to what he does. Wlad wants his opponents to be standing directly in front of him so that he can blast them out. Fury was never going to afford him the opportunity. He knew to box & move. You have to turn Wlad and keep him off balance. Fury did that and befuddled him with constant feints and his awkward herky-jerky rhythm.
That's a little much.
I don't think so. Steward probably would've agreed with me on that if he was still around. Fury was always going to be a real headache for Wlad stylistically. He's rangier, more mobile, quicker, and isn't gun shy. He was already in Wlad's head before the fight even started telling him that he would KO him.
But why are the heavies so damn littered with stocky, shorter fighters and not tall rangy ones like wlad and fury? Is it simply because taller people are more rare? Or they dont try out heavyweight boxing?
Not today. The average heavyweight is somewhere around 6'5. That's tall.
What I want to know is if that Fury is a hall of famer or if he just exposed a chi*nk in the armor.
I wouldn't vote for him to get into the International Boxing Hall of Fame but he will get in on name value alone. So will Joshua. The standards aren't as high anymore. When you see guys like Gatti & Barry McGuigan get in that tells you where we're at today. Fury abused his body badly which caused physical decline. He also regressed as a fighter in terms of his skills when he started relying heavily on leaning all over his opponents. He looked like a very different fighter a decade ago.
Last finesse Fury I can remember was from the first Wilder fight. He became a slugger after that, or mixed styles.
He moved reasonably well in the first Wilder fight but a few years prior his mobility was a lot better. What he became was a mauler under SugarHill Steward. The upside being that it made him more entertaining and he had a string of stoppage wins to show for it. The issue that he developed is that he relied too much on trying to impose his size in the clinch. He started to only throw one or two shots at a time and then grab opponents (jab & grab, basically). To his credit he did develop a power jab and rear uppercut. Realistically though he would've been better served boxing intelligently on the back foot and using his range rather than focusing on being a front foot fighter.
How's that being a jerk? It was merely a forewarning. Manny Steward had long predicted that Fury would be the next heavyweight king.
