How Did You Score Wilder vs Fury 1 ? Settle This Debate

In Wilder's TWO BIG ROUNDS he landed 6 more punches than Fury. (For a total of 12 additional landed punches). So it didn't add a whole helluva lot to his punchstat total. But he scored two knockdowns, so both were 10-8 rounds.

Fury's BIG rounds were the two where he landed 9 more punches than Wilder in round 10, and he landed 7 more punches that Wilder in round 3. (For a total of 16). And both were 10-9 rounds.


The other eight rounds, (Rounds 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11) Wilder threw more punches (often 10 or more than Fury) while Fury landed one or two more.

All eight were close rounds by every measure.

When a defending champ is busier, and the challenger is only landing one punch more a round, and he's going back to his corner cut and bloodied (because Fury got really marked up in that one) he isn't going to win all those rounds on the official cards.

We've all watched boxing long enough to know that.

 

IIRC scored it 114-112 Fury. I know I had him winning

 

Right!

I remember when people were calling that 30 percent Fury or some nonsense like that.

Fury fought great that night.

He looks like a shell of that now.

 

As I posted in the other thread, Fury's size and charisma in the ring that night with Wilder won over a lot of people.

But most challengers lose those fights.

When one guy is throwing and lot more punches, and the other is getting floored, and going back to his corner with cut foreheads and bleeding noses, judges aren't going "well, the guy who is getting bashed up landed one more jab, so the round is his."

Fury didn't win on his defense, he was the guy who was all cut and marked up after fight 1.

Landing basically one punch more a round, when the defending champ is busier and putting you on your back twice, usually isn't nearly good enough to lift someone's title. And it wasn't that night, either.

If Wilder throws 100 more punches than Parker and floors him twice, Parker isn't walking out with a draw let alone a WIN.

 

114-112 Fury. Davidson's conservative tactics cost Fury in that fight. He would have won way more comfortably if he didn't sit on the back foot so much.

 

In some ways, Fury-Wilder 1 was a 'very very very poor man's' Leonard-Hagler.

Of course, in many ways, it wasn't at all. (Hagler certainly wasn't giving up 40 pounds to Leonard like Wilder did.)

But there were a couple similarities. Like they say, history doesn't often repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

The defending, older champion Wilder threw a lot more punches (as did Hagler), the younger, flashier, just out of retirement Fury landed 13 more (Leonard landed 15 more) ...

Leonard was coming back. Leonard was supposed to lose. But he threw the showier combinations. And Leonard got the benefit of the doubt in close rounds, even though Hagler was landing the harder punches. One judge even gave Leonard 10 of the 12 rounds.

In the end, Hagler needed two knockdowns to keep his title via a draw, just like Wilder.

Hagler didn't get them. Wilder did.

 

To expand on this... My theory is that this judge was trying to keep it close to avoid Wilder looking like he'd been dominated too badly, and then the KD rounds exposed the dishonesty.

 

Fury 10-2

 

The question really is whether you'd find it possible to score it for Wilder, I think...

Put it this way - if acceptable cards are "Fury win" or "Draw" then out of three cards, you'd expect Fury to get given it more often than not, right?

I don't disagree - and in context it's probably better that that didn't happen (because we'd never have had the rematches that exposed Wilder) but many refs would've waved that off.

I have little sympathy with Wilder (or his fans) on that point though - not just because he got very similar preferential treatment in Ortiz 1, but also because (as usual) he clowned around the ring instead of getting to his corner.

 

At the same time... He was clearly rusty and unfit, so conserving energy and focus mattered (as the later rounds showed).

On top of that:
1) Nobody really knew how good Wilder was (or wasn't) before that fight because his resume was as thin as prison toilet paper.
2) Fury had always been a low powered points fighter - he wasn't known for aggression and power, so it would've been brave to go that way in what was a potentially risky fight given his poor condition and the unknown quantity that his opponent represented.