Is Tyson Fury the Best British Heavyweight of All Time?

Differences being that a.) Matchroom are high rollers with resources to be competitive with the big boys, b.) Whyte ultimately shunned the Pulev fight for a more creditable and renowned opponent (a former world titlist who was familiar to UK fans from his unification bout with Anthony Joshua).

Whyte was always going to have to accept 25% of the winning purse bid for the bout with Pulev, and 25% of Epic's 1.5 million dollar bid = a substantially bigger purse than 25% of Matchroom's 0.8 million dollar bid, so that's moot. We can conclude that either a.) losing control over the promotion and the location of the fight was the deal-breaker, or b.) that Hearn speculatively went through the motions and gladly allowed himself to be outbid because he had other big irons in the fire that would also pay his fighter more handsomely.

The Fury-Price situation isn't very comparable, given that a.) Mick knew he lacked the resources to beat out competing bids from bigger players, b.) dropping the titles and moving on to a guy like Rogan after losing the purse bid would've only intensified the criticism Fury would be in for as a consequence of simply dropping the titles and skipping the ceremony of purse bids altogether.

There's no evidence at all to suggest that Fury ever held that situation against Mick, nor that it had any bearing on his decision to resume his career with Warren, which likely had to do with the rift between himself and Peter/Hughie (who Hennessy was still representing at the time).

Boxing your Raphael Butlers and John McDermotts on Sky is not tantamount to boxing in big fights on Sky, and especially not in those days before the Matchroom FC bandwagon had gotten rolling. That's a big distinction you're conveniently overlooking. Price was hyped like mad on boxing forums. He was not a name outside of hardcore fan circles and Liverpool.

Fury, meanwhile, was already known to people who either didn't follow or barely followed boxing. This was almost entirely due to his headlining appearances on terrestrial TV. I chatted boxing with a lot of non-boxing people in those days (when you meet people in social situations and they find out that you box, conversation naturally turns to boxing, whether they know much about it or not), from gym bros whose knowledge of the sport extended to Tyson (Mike), Lennox, Naz and not much beyond to young women I was macking on whose knowledge of the sport was even less than that (practically zero) — the name "Tyson Fury" would frequently be mentioned without solicitation on my part (granted, some of these lay people were skeptical as to whether he was any good, but, crucially, they knew who he was and had seen him fight on TV). Even Joshua's name was drawing blank stares in those kinds of conversations as late as November of 2014, despite AJ having blown out the Bakhtovs and Airichs on very recent Arena shows broadcast by Sky.

Appearing on Sky Sports, even Sky Sports Box Office, does not equate to stardom. If it did, Luke Campbell would've been a household name outside of Hull, Kell Brook would've become a household name outside of Sheffield much sooner than February of 2022 (and I'm not entirely sure he qualifies as such even after the Khan victory).

Price's profile absolutely could have used the exposure of boxing in an all-British title bout in front of a terrestrial TV audience of millions, and it's ludicrous to suggest otherwise. I've lost count of the amount of instances of old-timers popping up in threads on here to remark that the fights had infinitely greater household reach thirty years ago in the days of big bouts on ITV.

If you were following boxing in 2012, your memory is shot to pieces. The numbers touted by Baloney far exceeded £125,000 and weren't counter-offers. After Price blasted Audley, some eight months after Fury dropped the British/Commonwealth, Baloney began shouting that he'd pay Fury £500,000 for the Price fight. Then, a couple months later, after Price whacked Skelton, he upped the claim to £650,000. The landscape had changed inside a year, Fury having just won a WBC semi-final eliminator with Kevin Johnson and now pursuing a shot at a Klitschko brother. (Due to the frustrating Vitali-Stiverne-Arreola pileup, he ended up going the IBF route in an eliminator with Steve Cunningham in what would be his final appearance on Channel 5, as the lure of a massive showdown with David Haye took him in the direction of Sky Box Office, only to have his time wasted by Haye and return to boxing on the WBO path, by which time Price was on a slow rebuilding program, coming unstuck at the hands of Erkan Teper a few months before Fury won the heavyweight championship lineage via the WBO mandatory challenge.) Baloney was just throwing numbers around in the press in aid of garnering publicity for his guy like the little carnival barker he is. Hennessy's £100,000 offer was formal, not loudly proclaimed in the media, submitted on Monday, February 5, 2012 (he didn't go public with it until February 9, after it had been rejected by Baloney).

Let's say, for argument's sake, that Price had kept up his end, had successfully navigated Tony Thompson (roughly equivalent to Fury's Johnson test) and maintained his momentum. If you think Fury wouldn't have met that guy at some imminent juncture, you're out of your gourd. Willing to box David Haye, but leery of David Price, okay.

Price remains the only one of the pair to turn down a career-high payday opportunity to challenge a fellow Englishman for British and Commonwealth honors before a TV audience of millions.

Fact is, he was a busted flush and incapable of keeping pace with Tyson's development. I said before he fell to Thompson that his undoing was imminent and that it come down to equal parts lack of natural aptitude and lack of the kind of seasoning Fury had acquired from stiff tests like Chisora or rising from the canvas against Neven Pajkić. All the internet experts saw was a bunch of quick, easy knockouts, enough for them to proclaim Fury cannon fodder for Price. Incidentally, I still maintain that Fury was the better man as far back as their amateur bout (when Tyson was a teenager and Price a physically matured man with much more experience), whose victor was decided by politics as much as anything that took place in the ring, though the Furys accepted the decision gracefully and magnanimously enough.

The only reason you're clinging to the 'Fury ducked Price' mythology is you're a Lenny the Lion Cub nostalgist who wants to come on like that stale old Pricey the Boogerman chestnut is somehow of consequence to a comparison of Fury's and Lewis' respective legacies (the former of which is still in the process of being written). Kinda dumb, because it really isn't.

 

Bob Fitzsimmons has to get respect for being boxing first triple champion, one of only two men to have won a world title at Middleweight and Heavyweight, and being the only British Heavyweight Champion for almost a century before Lennox Lewis got the WBC belt in 1992, but I cant class him as the Best British Heavyweight because he was not a natural heavyweight and his reign was rather short.

Lennox Lewis is probably still the strongest candidate. While it's true Fury is currently undefeated and Lennox wasn't, Lennox has more notable fighters of his era on his resume than Fury does on his, and there's the fact that Lennox is still the most recent man to be the Undisputed Unified World Heavyweight Champion.

If we get a mega-fight between Fury and the winner of Usyk/Joshua 2 for all the belts and Fury wins that it would definitely strenghten Fury's case, but I think he's currently second to Lennox in the all time list.

 

hopefully by the time his career is over Big Joe Joyce will be top of the tree

 

We know he is better than Wilder. And Sefer Seferi.

 

He isn’t even close to Lewis and can never catch him unless he has a much longer reign at the top

 

It has to be Lennox Lewis for me at the present time. IMHO, a couple of avenged losses do not disqualify Lennox. Fury is still considered active at the moment, so him overtaking Lennox is a possibility. It remains to be seen if Tyson Fury's career is over, or not. Time will tell.

 

Fury would be hard for any heavyweigh to beat, but if you're talking about actual greatness, then Lennox's resume etc is better than Fury's at the moment.

 

In time history will show his resume was paper thin. Being the best of this generation is all he is. Decent fighter and a H2H stylistic nightmare for anyone....but best ever....nah not for me

 

Let's be honest though, Fury did duck Price at the time.

 

Even Price himself would later admit that it was never the case.

 

What s your opinion on their amateur fight?

 

I don't think Fury will call it a day till he's @least undisputed v Usyk or Joshua,With another 94,000 fans at Wembley no-one in there right mind would turn that sort of money down.