Fury vs Wilder:
It kills me to actually break this fight down, due to the fact that if this is the elite of the heavyweight division, it just proves what a nose dive the talent pool for the big men has taken. For the casual fan, I’m sure they are chomping at the bit for this fight because media is branding it like the next best thing since Ali/Frazier. Well, that may be one of the most disrespectful statements you can bestow upon those two legendary fighters. Wilder and Fury may be the best we have right now, but Ali and Frazier were some of the best to ever lace them up. In a completely watered down heavyweight division for years, you have two men that stand head and shoulders above the rest in today’s world. Both men come from very different styles and their paths are really just not the same. On one side you have a devastating striker in Wilder who gives up much boxing skills on the feet with very unchained looping punches and a style that really isn’t viewed as pleasing to the avid boxing fan, but the guy knows where his bread and butter is and that is a devastating right hand that if landed cleanly, you aren’t going to remain on your feet. Wilder will never be a seasoned and skilled boxer, but a “puncher”. He absolutely is and when you are labeled as a “puncher”, it truly only takes one to finish things. Normally I always go with the boxer and Fury has proven to be just that. An extremely slick boxer for his size with good movement, creates angles well, and understands patterns. He is a smart fighter. A fighter that truly understands movement. The only reason he he looks odd when he is doing it is because he is such a large human, so the fluency of it just doesn’t look all that smooth. However, behind good movement and a good jab, Fury doesn’t create nor does he generate very good power and knockouts aren’t really a specialty of his. He will beat you with speed, distance, and ring generalship. If you watched the first fight, it was clear that Fury won if you truly know how to score rounds. However, the draw was given and what softened the blow of the loss was the fact that Wilder clipped his wing at the end of the fight. Fury was somehow able to recover when he looked out to come back and finish the fight which ended in a draw. Now for me, as the trainer of Fury, the game plan should be simple. Hover around the weight of the last fight or maybe and trim up a little more. Use the attributes that gave you that edge in fight one. Boxing. Box his head off with speed and angles. However, Fury since then has changed camps and split ways with Ben Davidson, which in my eyes was a very bad mistake. He also announced that he would be coming in heavy. Targeting around 270. This a weight that is just shouting to me that he is actually going to try and knock Wilder out and play into his game, which to me seems quite silly and foolish. There is an old saying, “Don’t fix what isn’t broken”. Even though the judges saw the first fight differently than it should have been scored. He technically won the majority of those rounds by out classing Wilder with boxing. His record indicates that he in fact has KO potential, but keep in mind that he has three KOs in his last 10 fights stemming back to 2013. He does it on volume. He does not have game changing power like Wilder. Wilder is the type of fighter that can be down 10 rounds and send one down the barrel and KO you in the 11th, wiping all your hard work to the wave side and he proved that against Fury in their last dance. Clearly down on the cards in my book, he sent Fury down with a grazing shot, that if a few inches in another location on the chin and Fury would have been spark out. So why play that game with Wilder? Why give him what he wants? It is clear that he has problems with movement fighters and now you want to engage in what he knows? Just seems like very bad planning to me. What made Ali great was not his power. It was his ability to utilize his boxing to create traps and angles that would allow other straight line fighters to walk into his punches and as the accumulation would mount, slowly and surely like chopping down a tree, they would eventually fall. Fury is going to be the bigger fighter because he is choosing to be, but to say I do not have a concern that he will slow down a bit, his conditioning ay suffer down the stretch and that he wot get clipped in a fire fight, I would be lying. I don’t care if your 230 or 300 lbs, Your chin is your chin and if you are going to exchange in the pocket with a guy that has all of his wins by KO then you are playing with a percentage rate that is really not in your favor. With that said I watched the fight quite a few times and here are a few things that people are missing about Fury and their first engagement. First off – Fury has never been KO’d so he DOES have a chin. Secondly, if you really watch the fight and the two knockdowns that he took, I want you to really digest something. He wasn’t hurt on either knockdown. You need to understand that he is an extremely large man which can be rocked off balance very easily. Off balance and being hurt are two completely different animals. In round nine he was put down, but immediately smiled and put his glove to the head like he was looking up at the sun in a posing position to be funny. Popped back up and started dancing. In round 12 when he went down people thought he was in a coma that he just miraculously woke up from like tombstone. That was not the case at all. He went down and you saw in his eyes that he was making clear eye contact with the ref and his count. He was getting a blow and relaxing. Once the count got close, he popped up and his legs were not rubbery at all. He answered the Refs requests promptly and when the ref asked him to walk to point A back to point B, he did so in a jogging place type manor. He wasn’t hurt and there is something to be said about that. During the fight he was taking some of Wilders best shots and putting his hands behind his back with sheer confidence. Maybe he felt his power and really doesn’t respect it as much as most, but either way it is a dangerous game to play. The weight is bothersome for me, it really is. I would rather see him come in leaner and faster than heavier, slower, and stronger. He admitted that he could have finished Wilder a few times, but didn’t have the energy near the tail of the fight so what really gives on the weight gain? I can make an excuse that he was on a major layoff before that fight and really didn’t have a great camp, but I just don’t really understand the philosphy behind this blueprint of his. With that said he is a pure boxer against a pure puncher and its very hard for me to bet against the boxer. Buster Douglas was a boxer against Tyson that one legendary night and the volume was able to get it done. Fury needs to really work behind his jab and stay ellusive. He has the ability to change stances from conventional to southpaw, which I love, because it will be hard for Wilder to really adjust and settle in. The key for me here on the Fury end is that he uses his jab to set up opportunities to get in and out, but on the way in he should exchange, tie Wilder up and then break. He can’t just go into the pocket and go out. He needs to control the pop out time when he can break and protect. He will be the bigger man in there, so tying Wilder up shouldn’t be an issue. Wilder fights in a straight line and he will be looking for one thing. He isn’t bouncing on his feet setting traps and being crafty. He is waiting, waiting and waiting to set up his right hand and uncork a game changer. I am really curious to see how Fury approaches this. If he comes in looking for a KO, then I will know early. If he comes in with movement, confidence and sharp awareness, then the pure boxer should win the fight. I am going with Fury here. Even though there is so much unknown behind his camp, his weight gain for the fight and just the nuances involved I still find it hard to not give him a a slight edge for me. Yes Wilder can finish things quickly, even if he is down majorly on the cards, but if Fury can elude Wilder and not get sloppy late, then he already proved he can take one of Wilder’s best punches two times and still get up. That says something and for that reason, in a fight that should be very close, I think has more tools to win outside of an equalizer punch. How he uses these tools are totally up to him, but I can only tell you who I truly feel is the better fighter in its entirety and for me, it’s Fury.
