You never seen AJ trade? You've only seen his last two fights then I take it. In previous fights he generally looked to trade. Whyte and Wlad would probably be the best examples of AJ trading. Yes, I believe the Ruiz loss have made him more cautious in that regard, and it's probably a permanent shift. Somewhat along the lines of how Lewis and Wlad changed. But it's rational to not to look to trade with someone you can dominate from the outside. Then it's a risk you don't have to take. With Fury, who's a phenomenal outside fighter but not that much at mid-range, the calculous should naturally shift.
You can see that in interviews he doesn’t even have to be in the ring. He’s been sparked out bad in sparring before Ruiz 1 and it’s left it’s Mark imo. Joshua’s dad didn’t want him fighting in the dressing room before Ruiz 1, he could see the bottle had gone out his boy !
Throughout furys career hes always been seen as featherfisted. Mainly because of the way he fights. But watching that last wilder fight fury actually punched like a mule...was getting his whole body behind some of them punches and its a big body at that. People should watch that fight again...he,ll spangle joshua in a slugfest. Obviously at that size and with joshuas power anyone could go but i,d bet fury to win if it did turn into a slugfest. Furys a seriously natural big man...joshuas big but hes bulked up in comparison to fury. Joshua hits hard as well to be fair.
If they are chest to chest, no holding, and the ref lets it go. AJ might get the first KD, even the second. But Fury wins overall. Reason being, AJ has never looked comfortable even getting back up from a scenario like this. Fury appears to thrive on it. AJ may be the harder hitter, but it wont matter how hard he hits Fury. Its all about the heart. AJ will need a shotgun and then a hammer and six inch nails to keep Fury down. This is why I cant see Joshua beating Fury, as great a boxer as AJ is.
*statement of the obvious klaxon* Hard to call. Fury has better head movement and probably punch resistance, Joshua the greater power. But Fury will surely keep the fight at range, his jab is both harder and all-round better than Joshua's, let that take care of things.
Yes, he retained his killer instinct. As did Wlad for that matter. And AJ has too from the looks of it. But Lewis became more cautious after the McCall KO, picked his moments more. I think AJ is going down that route as well. But not against Fury. No sense in looking for clinches there, unless he's hurt. He must use the moments when he's in range and let his hands go.
Fury has better defence and chin, more punch variety, better body punches, better footwork, more reach, better endurance. He also has good combos and counters, fast hands. You can't rule him out in a slugfest just because Joshua may have more power punch for punch. Joshua could be beaten to the punch, miss more, gass and get sloppy etc. But it probably does make it more of a coin flip if Fury does this.
Clearly Aj, thinking fury could beat joshua in the pocket is as idiotic as thinking Joshua could outbox Fury
Fury would destroy him. Fury has real power and Sugar Hill made him realize that, he would KO Joshua easily.
Fury does not have a better punch variety and he does not have faster hands or better combos. AJ has threw more body shots and has a far higher connect rate than Fury in both their last few fights as well actually.
The one thing that really impressed me by Fury in Wilder 2 was his jab. That was a proper power jab that he stepped into very well. That jab could definitely cause Joshua issues as well. As for the rest of his arsenal I wasn't much impressed tbh. It was more a matter how easily Wilder's stance crumbled under that jab so he wasn't in a position to neither defend properly nor counter. That a 270 lbs man can land hard punches on an open target isn't that surprising, but I wasn't much impressed by the form of Fury's power punches. Too telegraphed, too much arm punching and he didn't really put them together as he should have (some nice one-twos but not much else in terms of combos), seeing how practically defenceless Wilder was. You can always argue that he didn't need to show more finesse than he did, but it didn't prove to me that Fury has turned into a great mid-range fighter in any case. But that jab really impressed me, and the feints behind it. Don't expect it will make AJ unravel like Wilder did, but it could certainly cause him problems.