AJ: a great modern fighter can compete in any era

Took AJ as meaning modern athletes could compete with those in the past. Didn’t take it as him bigging up himself directly.

Talking of social media.. Fury’s Instagram is now promoting a new line of socks and hats by his dad. There is a actually a John Fury range of merch

 

Chuck Wepner would have done a line off of the thumb of his glove, chinned the Humble One and served him up like a sharing platter at his favourite chain of restaurants.

Whilst I'm talking about Joshua though I will say again that I have a lot of respect for him after the donation he made, I don't want to just bad mouth him, he's a bit of a gimmick at times and annoying but he's done something incredibly important for the British Boxing World and I'm not going to forget that.

 

I just get the feeling that the Fury's are getting built up so much and climbing so high that with all the baggage they carry and their tendencies there is going to be an almighty fall on the horizon, John especially, he's a monumental balls up waiting to happen.

 

*****. He’ll be stood in his head by Fury.

 

He’s just a fighter with exceptional mass market appeal. Being undefeated was a big part of that though and some of the gloss has come off. They’re now marketing it as a bit of a redemption story and ‘road to undisputed’.

None of these posts are authentically him - in reality he’s quite a boring nondescript person. He just looks the part for marketing and is a very good fighter.

 

Big Joan Fury surely the man to sell Brown Pants - spent the entire summer shyting himself after Micky Theo called his bluff and exposed him as a shytehouse.

 

Even a prime "big George" would be on the small size by today's standards: a shade under 6'4 and 217 pounds in the 1st Frazier fight. It was only after he blew up in weight as an old man that he was over 250 pounds. The heavyweights of today's era are much bigger and have the advantages of modern sport science, training, strategy and nutrition. The big men in the past like 6'6 118 KG Carnera had no athleticism, his equivalent today would be Valuev, who was 7 foot tall and 150 KG but you get monsters today like 6'8, 270 pound Fury who are also top athletes. Sports fans are often nostalgic about the past but things move on. Ali was great in his era fighting what would now be called cruiserweights but at times he also lost to them, and more than his record would suggest. I don't think you can compare between eras because time always favours the new over the old. The same is true in chess. Paul Morphy was a great talent but advances in the game of chess mean he wouldn't be a top player today, unless he had access to modern advantages.

 

It wouldn’t go as long as the 5 rounds Bruno went the first time.

 

Liked for the Morphy reference, highly suspicious.

 

Tyson was beyond awful in that fight. A truly terrible version of Tyson. He was haunted to land that right hand. But it did the job.

 

Totally agree. Like Povetkin against Whyte he only needed to land that money shot once though and it was all over. Was a shadow of the fighter he was the decade before.

 

Agreed but when we get in the discussion of Prime Ali vs Tyson Fury i cant help but remember Fury claiming his hardest fight was against 210lb Steve Cunningham. It seems to me Fury and Aj struggle with shorter quick fighters and Fury himself struggled with the slickness of Cunningham. And with the rise of Oleksandr Usyk its clear very skilled small heavyweights like Fraizer or Ali or Foreman or Young or any skilled fighter above 200lb could compete in todays era.

If i remember correctly is was Holyfield that claimed Foreman hit harder than Bowe and Lewis who are both 6'5 super heavy weights.

 

Fury did claim that Cunningham was his hardest fight but objectively speaking John McDermott gave him more problems. Fury was a hot and cold fighter 8-12 years ago, fit and motivated one fight, out of shape and underestimating his opponent the next. He also had a weakness for the overhand right; the shot that Pajkic, Firtha and Cunningham rocked him with. I suspect that Usyk's combination of speed, agility, stamina, skill, chin, ring IQ, mental toughness and experience would give Fury more problems than any other heavyweight in the division and that is a good barometer to see how a man of Ali's dimensions and skillset would have dealt with Fury or the super-heavyweight monsters of today. Foreman (it should be noted that he was 260 pounds when Holyfield fought him and Holyfield disliked Lewis, even claiming that Qawi was his 2nd best opponent after Bowe) may have been able to hit harder than Lewis or Bowe but punch power is just one area that tends to be an advantage for modern super-heavyweights. Height, reach and weight combined with athleticism grant a wide variety of benefits beyond just punch power and they more than compensate for the speed and dexterity advantages of the lower weights.

 

Of course but it was Cunningham who outslicked Fury and put him down. Good Superheavyweights in general are better than good small heavyweights. Foreman was overweight but he didnt hit harder as an old man. May have made his shots heavier but thats it. He was faster in his peak. Holyfield said qawi was his second best opponent isn't a bad thing. They fought at cruiserweight and pound for pound it was clear qawu was giving him trouble. Its clear that doesn't mean qawi could beat Lewis. I dont remember him saying qawi could hit harder than Lewis or Bowe.

 

I contend that Fury is lying. In his autobiography he doesn't even mention McDermott 1 as one of his toughest fights. Saying "Cunningham gave me my hardest fight" is a face-saving tactic because prior to the knockdown at the start of the 2nd (the same shot that Pajkic floored him with) Cunningham (who had a far longer reach than Usyk or Ali) wasn't even outboxing Fury and in the 3rd, Fury made it a dirty brawl and used his height and weight advantage to walk Cunningham down and lean all over him. And there isn't much comparison between the Fury who fought Cunningham, expecting an easy fight against a blown-up cruiserweight, and the Fury we saw against Klitschko or Wilder. I believe that the current version of Fury beats the best small heavyweight in Usyk but time will tell.

Holyfield is also lying and saving-face by giving Lewis less credit than he deserves. He was far less competitive with Lewis than he was with Bowe, let alone Qawi. Fighters aren't necessarily going to tell the whole truth, especially when they dislike certain opponents. I'm sure Liston could punch twice as hard as the much taller and heavier Hughie Fury but punch power is enigmatic, past a certain weight they seem to come in a variety of shapes and sizes.