Fury to fight either Ruiz Jr or Helenius in March.

Tbf tho whytes been beating decent names. Chisora twice, parker, rivas, helenius, povetkin. If hes not worthy of a shot then who is. Not many have beat a list of names like that. Surely you should be rewarded if you take on and beat good names. Eddie hearn or not.

Usually promoters are fiddling their way to a title shot...in this case its quite the opposite. Whytes had decent names put in front of him...hes beat them. What else can you do to get a shot really.

 

Agreed. The best way I can describe it is that even moderate Matchroom cards feel big. The arena choreography is the same at all but the biggest stadium events, where they push the boat out even further. No other promoter has come close to the Canelo-Saunders or Joshua-Usyk events.

Purely on looks and feel - forget who is in the ring for a second - they're consistently the best UK promoter at what they do.

If anyone disagrees, just look at this place during a Matchroom card. Even their biggest critics are out in force on the RBRs.

 

Take the shot when it is offered - he don't want it and uses money as an excuse.

Born a pudding and will die a pudding.

 

I wasn't twisting anything.
Ruiz is mediocre but he's better than Whyte.
The ONLY thing Whyte has over Ruiz on their records is "W12" against Parker, while Ruiz has "L12" ... but if you watch the actual fights, Whyte didn't do any better. Both fights were razor close on the cards, and debatable, but Whyte was all over the place, gassed, down and almost KO'd in the 12th, against Parker who was coming off a loss, also it seemed Whyte needed constant dirty tactics and a 'headbutt KD' credited his way to get the decision at all. Whereas Parker-Ruiz was just a very close fight that could go either way.
So, it evens it up.

Ruiz was WBA/IBF/WBO unified world champion, with an impressive KO over an undefeated champion.
Whyte, who was KO'd by Joshua in 2015 for the vacant British title, absolutely refused to fight him in 2019 despite millions of pounds on offer along with his chance for revenge.
(now, he seems to be doing something comparable with Fury, risking pricing himself out)

Ruiz is the more accomplished boxer.
When people look back on this era, beating Ruiz would actually add a little to Fury's legacy/resume, especially if Fury can stop him.
Whereas Whyte would add virtually nothing, since the record books show he was KO'd in 5 just two fights ago by Povetkin.

 

Yeah don't get me wrong, Whyte should have fought for a title by now. 2019 was the year it should have happened. But it didn't happen against Joshua because of a combination of pricing himself out, and Hearn wanting to crack America. Joshua losing to Ruiz obviously saw that all get pushed back.

The one that should have happened was Wilder vs Whyte in 2019. How Wilder fought Breazeale instead was just completely wrong, made absolutely no sense. Fury coming back again was fair enough, but again not sure why Ortiz got the rematch ahead of Whyte.

Problem in that time is Whyte continued to fight on PPV cards that in no way, shape or form should have been PPV. That's led to him being elevated way above his station, and could see him price himself out of the Fury fight same as he did against Joshua. Really odd turn of events for someone who should be a straightforward title challenger stepping up.

 

There's no one around except Usyk.

 

I'll be honest though, I didn't think Usyk's win over Joshua was as good as Ruiz's.
But Ruiz lost the rematch in dreadful fashion, and I expect Usyk to do a job on AJ in the rematch.

Truth is, for Fury, he'd be better off fighting Usyk with Usyk coming off TWO wins over AJ, and a stoppage win in the rematch.
For Fury's standing, if he were to fight Usyk next and beat him, we could all say "good win, but Usyk on had a decison win over AJ and one over Chisora at HW". It makes more sense for Usyk to prove the point against AJ with another win, preferably a stoppage too. Hopefully that fight will happen around April next year, and not much later.

In the meantime Fury needs a "filler", a "tune up" fight.
And that's what hundreds of posts on this forum seem to be concerned with, just squabbling over which "bum" is acceptable and which "bum" is not. Opinions will differ.

As far a I can see, these guys are all acceptable at the moment:

Joe Joyce
Joseph Parker
Andy Ruiz Jr.
Dillian Whyte
Otto Wallin
Michael Hunter
Filp Hrgovic
Agit Kabayel
Frank Sanchez

Examples of unacceptable:

Robert Helenius
David Haye
Deontay Wilder
Dereck Chisora
Kubrat Pulev
Efe Ajagba
Jarrel Miller

Borderline cases:
winner of Ortiz-Martin (Jan 1)
Oscar Rivas?

 

This is exactly how I feel about it. He's been banging on and on about waiting for his WBC shot, much the same way he went on and on about wanting a rematch with Joshua. He turned that opportunity down for his own reasons and he's now doing it again with Fury. He'd rather play the hard done to victim than live up to his 'I'll fight anyone' hype. He could try and change his own destiny with his fists rather than his lawyers pen. Ruiz took what was on the table and changed his life, fat pudding or whatever, that's a real fighting man who made his dreams come true.

As for Fury, another greedy fighter arguing over zeros on a contract even though he's got more wedge than anyone could possibly spend. Give the fans what they crave, get in the ring with Whyte and box his ears off.

It's either greedy belt organisations, greedy promoters, greedy fighters or all 3 and I think that's definitely at play here. Neither fighter, promoters or the WBC look good here.

 

The bitterness towards Eddie Hearn from other promoters, and Hearn's arrogant persona towards them and his dismmissiveness towards Fury in the past, really hasn't help the situation.
The 'politics' battles outside the ring, the power battles, and the sheer pettiness of some of the characters involved (including the fighters) is painful to follow at times.
Every single one of them is on a monstrous ego trip.

 

There's massive egos on all of them. There's fans on here talking about who should be entitled to what cut and even justifying fights not happening on that basis. Yet it's us fans who miss out ultimately.

I don't begrudge them their prize money, but it's a sad reflection on the sport with how top heavy it is. Can't imagine how some lads must feel when they're winning British title belts then going to work on Monday morning.

 

Absolutely no interest in Fury fighting Helenius. Ruiz, if it’s in America, would be just about acceptable.

Whyte is an absolute waste of time though. Yet another title shot he’s priced himself out but he’ll still get his violin out.

For the life of me though I can’t see why he doesn’t just cut Hearn out? Go and do a deal with Top Rank and get the fight made. Hearn is trying his absolute best to get it to purse bids to get one over on Arum and Warren and you just know he’s advising Whyte with this arbitration crap. Right from the start Hearn and his tea boy Frank Smith were saying it would go to purse bids... no intention of trying to do a deal and be sensible.

 

Rather him fight whyte.

Helenius is decent enough but not to fight fury when there’s others he can fight.

I like Ruiz fast hands punches in combos, but terribly slow feet. If Tyson still has the legs and decides too (which I think he would) it’d be one of his boxing lessons from the outside without much incident for a unanimous points decision.

Think he’d just go at it with whyte and be exciting whilst it lasted, plus another brit, better build up, not on at silly o’clock etc.

Not really arsed who gets paid what as they’ll all be a lot richer than thy were before the fight

 

Totally Agree. Ruiz took his chance and won. I would love to see Whyte vs Fury, but it seems to be fading. On a side note, I have always rated Ruiz as a fighter. Long before he fought AJ I knew who he was. I wasn’t surprised he beat AJ. On his night he is a handful for anyone.

 

Helenius is crap. Beating a fat little Polish midget doesn’t make you any good. He’s still crap.

 

When Ruiz was announced as the Miller replacement I told all my mates that his style was a risky one for Joshua and it was a far better fight than Miller. They all laughed.