Bruno: Fury would be eaten for dinner, in my day.

Not nearly as much and as potent stuff as the 80's and early 90's fighters, because you wouldn't pass the simplest test nowadays. Sceduling, micro dosing, things that can be explain one way or the other. With the exception of Miller of course, who was going full Holyfield, in a time you can no longer get away with that. Never go full Holyfield!

 

Miller got away with it for ages.
Holyfield went from 190 to about 212 in his prime, lots of fighters are doing similar these days.
You can't compare that to Miller, who looked like a powerlifter.

The fighters now are bigger than they were in the 1980s and early 1990s.

 

Yes, drugs designed to be hard to detect, when dosed the right way and at the right time.
What you don’t seem to grasp is the balancing act in this case. They have to find a balance to effectiveness and chance for detection.
Earlier days you could just use every most effective dope for the situation, all day every day. With help from dopingdoctors.
It's not that hard to understand.

 

Probably an exaggeration by Bruno but no doubt that era was stronger. I do think Tyson Lewis and Vitali have a lot of success. I see Fury out boxing Vitali but see no others really being competitive with them. Imagine AJ walking to the ring with Tyson waiting in there for him and not Ruiz

 

Its in the Sun newspaper...maybe they made some of it up!

 

AJ was 21.5 when he fought 5'11, 69 inch reach, 20.5 year old southpaw Mihai Nistor in the amateurs, who put it on the bodybuilder and stopped him in 3 rounds.

Unlike Fury, Wilder, Vitali, Lewis, Holmes, Ali etc. AJ has never believed he was the best, even before Wlad/Ruiz, so he would be terrified entering the ring against such a hyped KO artist. Prime Tyson went the distance with a number of far less talented and smaller big men than AJ but the critical point was that they weren't scared of him. AJ's a good on top fighter but he has frozen under pressure, so he'd likely panic, gas out rapidly and the shots would have more impact than usual. AJ could win with the right tactics and mindset but more often than not he'd get chinned imo.

 

In terms of quality, where does AJ rank out of the post-Klitschko era heavyweights? It's a difficult question, we'll have a better idea in a few years but he may not even be top 5. I have Fury, Wilder and Usyk definitively above him. Would he have beaten Povetkin, Briedis or Ortiz in 2016? Would he beat Joyce today?

 

I remember reading an interview with Henry Cooper approx. 20 years after his boxing career and in this interview he told the heavyweights who were nowadays were worth nothing and that he could easily defeat them

 

I would not trust Bruno to beat somebody like Joyce in this era. In fact Joyce would be his best win as definitely better than McCall. Bigger man, bigger punch, no less durable. Bruno of course avoided the Joyce of his era in Gary Mason. Too big a puncher to risk his whiskers on.

 

Wilder would put Bruno to sleep, Fury would play with him, AJ would stand a chance, quite a few of todays heavies would, Usyk would run rings around him. The worst thing about this is that Bruno is a likeable guy, this might be seen as "brutally honest" but it's just sensationalist rubbish to get attention, it's sad seeing people stoop to these lows because he can't seriously mean that. Tyson Fury, for all his faults, is a World Class and Elite Level operator, something Bruno never became at any point in his career.

 

He has no competition. You had 30-40 guys significantly better than Wilder or Joshua back then.

Tyson Fury might well of been John Fury back then. Who knows

 

Agree with bruno. Rate fury highly but i still say that 80,s era was brilliant. For years people have spoken about a terrible 80,s and 90,s heavyweight generation.

But if you actually go back and watch some of the fights....even the guys that we,re on the fringes and a lot of them tyson battered. Their great fighters its just that a lot of people have only seen them against tyson. Who was tbf a phenomenen for his age.

Always hard to judge eras....i think guys need to only be judged in their own era but saying that most of them could fight back then. They learned by sparring relentlessly. No amount of padwork etc could make up for that.

Fury still cant really punch properly....took him rounds to finish off wilder. At some points he was doing more dsmage pushing wilder.

 

Fury is good enough to mix it in any era. Great chin, enough power and excellent boxing skills.