Fury was never that good.

What point? The reason Fury's popularity took a massive nose dive was because after winning the title a decade ago. He wasted his legacy, becoming an obese, alcoholic coke fiend, while getting banned for doping. He spent those years feasting on bums, arm wrestlers and Derirck Chisora bar a handful of fights. The high level opposition was still there. He just didn't fight them.

Hence a CW had to come up and clean out the division.

 

I guess a better title here would’ve been did Fury reach his full potential. Some will say he underachieved, personally I think with his lifestyle and bad habits he overachieved in the end. Credit to him for that, but it’s all caught up with him.

 

My point that this being a weak HW era.. which includes Fury , Wilder, AJ ect..

 

It's definatly not a strong HW era but neither is it a weak HW era.

 

You have nailed it.

 

Agree we never seen the best of him due to his lifestyle.

Reckon he would have smashed Usyk if he lived the life of a professional athlete the way Usyk lived his.

 

Never stopped being the self-uppercutting buffoon to me.

Size is all he really ever brought in terms of value - that and being pretty extraordinarily agile on his toes for someone of his stature and obese bulk. In terms of boxing skills, however? Nah.

The hype really began and ended with the lopsided decision over WK. That had a lot more to do IMO with Klitschko getting into his own head and bottling it, than it did with Fury putting on some transcendent ATG performance.

 

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People forget what a versatile and fluid boxer Pre 2015 Fury was. Parries, slips and feints, excellent at judging distance, masterful defence, switch hitter and could adapt to any style. He made boxers miss then he made them quit.

 

This is fury, you could say this about every fighter…”if they improved on ABC, they would be better”

 

People bang on about his elite skills as a fighter, but offensively the main highlight is his 1-2 which looks beautiful when he pulls it off. Other than that he is just a big lump with good footwork. His punch selection isn’t that good.

I think another reason people struggle is believing this narrative of him being a master skilled fighter, he’s not. We are in an age where skill in heavyweights is rare and most are overweight…the only one with sublime skill is usyk, not fury. Ortiz used to be very skilled and boxed by the textbook.

Without his size, we wouldn’t have heard of him.
But he does have his size, so we have heard of him, he has entertained us, and he is a difficult guy to beat.
His poor defence and regularly getting hurt, his comebacks etc is part of the entertainment of a fury fight.

 

Some over achieve and some under achieve.

It is what it is with Fury and we can only speculate on how better he could have been if he lived the life of an athlete.

 

I used to feel quite similarly, but the big lug actually grew on me in time. Rumsfeld can confirm as much.

But I have come to believe that his agility (nimble as hell for a man his size), awkward style/approach, remarkable recuperative powers, and extraordinary self-confidence would present problems in any era.

 

He was born into boxing and started from a toddler. It’s pretty much all he’s done all his life. I grew up not far from him and it’s ultra rare to have seen him outside of boxing life (gym-training or sparring, or shows where fighting on same show).

In recent years, he’s gone on benders as he’s mentally weak and couldn’t keep disciplined.

 

To call this a duck is very harsh. His uncle (his trainers brother) had an operation for a blood clot right around the time of the fight. During the operation he fell into a coma and then died 3 months later without ever waking up. Peter Fury's decision for pulling out is justified here imo.

 

Ustinov was a late replacement for Chisora. I think the duck rumour came when he turned up to the press conference in good shape and they pulled out literally the next day.