Tyson Fury's era to forget

"Fury's era" was never really Fury's era. I prefer calling it the post-Klitschko era.

There wasn't one clearly above the rest of the pack, which could have been cemented with a Joshi vs Fury encounter. Who himself obviously had weaknesses.
Fury was absent and fought too many soft touches during his comeback, sometimes didn't even look great against them. And his "retirement" was actually because he was caught jucing in the IBF eliminator to get the Wlad fight, wich stayed hidden until after when the Wlad rematch was supposed to happen.
On the other side of the isle we had Wilder having his own personal league, with often ridicilous top 10's and only having to fight mandatories once they replaced an actual one with a stooge.

Could have been a good era, but ended up being a bad one.

 

Interesting, a certain group claim aj was universally recognized as the best heavyweight in the world

 

At one stage he had a basis for that claim, I would say.

 

Universally recognized is a very strong phrase, plenty thought Wilder would beat him even if a minority

In retrospect Wilder would have KO'd him.

 

Yeah I wouldn't call it the Fury era, Joshua was just as if not more prominent, and Fury loses so much if we don't count Wilder as well.

I like the term "post-Klitschko" era that started with Fury upsetting Wlad and ends with Usyk taking all the marbles and putting his stamp on it. We are just in the ending phases of that era now while the last few fighters from there shuffle off the board, Joshua, Fury, Wilder, Usyk etc.

I'm excited to see what the new era brings with a lot of fresh blood coming up and still relatively young. I think Parker will be the only prominent heavyweight still around from that era.

 

Wilder would get his ears boxed off. Does he have a chance? Of course. AJ's chin is iffy. But AJ would almost certainly land the big bombs firts.

 

Yeah I think Parker is going to be the big fish around after Usyk closes up shop.

 

Quite impressive how many lessons lie in that era for someone like me who started out following professional boxing pretty much around the fury-klitschko fight (maybe 1-2 years earlier).

In the beginning I was convinced that Klitschko was unbeatable. I was impressed by his physique and technique. Having started boxing myself a bit earlier ans being a nerd for for technique, learning eastern european style, Klitschko was picture book.

So Fury's win impressed me a whole lot. The way he moved around the ring defensively, discouraging klitschko from attacking and controlling the fight was how I liked to deal with my sparring partners but he was almost twice my size and should have been slow and lumbering.

Blowing up to 400 pounds and winning (drawing) against wilder still being out of shape and meant as a lucrative cherry pick by wilder after being out of the ring for a long time was also pretty impressive to me. It reminded me of Ali's 3 year ban. His opponents in between the wilder and usyk fights were disappointing and his lying turned away fans and cost him my admiration then. But he still seemed to be the best heavyweight.

At the same time eddy hearn did the promoter-job of the century with joshua, pushing england to boxing-country number one on the planet and giving us lots of fight at european times. Joshua looked fierce and strong, though less technically impressive than klitschko and less nimble than fury. Still, winning against a lot of names was impressive.

Wilder was impressive in his own right, finding the punches that put ortiz down, especially in the second fight, demanded a lot of patience and precision and I switched from hoping for him to finally be exposed to understanding his strengths and that not all about him was luck.

The lesson to me is how all this changes in hindsight. How the valuations change from 'these are historic fighters and hard to beat for anyone ever' (especially fury because size&movement) to what fights did they actually have and what do those tell us.

Fury avoided joshua in his prime multiple times. Joshua and wilder somehow avoided each other. Wilders stock fell a bit after the fury fights, but after not convincingly beating everyone like before when facing other opponents again we slowly learned that wilder is done and the knowledge bleeds into our perception of wilders prime, too. Joshua looked menacing until he lost to ruiz. He also fell apart mentally. The lashing out after the usyk fight totally changed public perception of him (rightfully so, even though I am unsure if his personality changed around that time and he was actually more mentally healthy before).

It was the first (heavyweight) era I followed and I had my opinions rise and fall, my admiration as well. I am pretty thankful to thr fighters who gave me the best entertainment I got and turned me away from soccer for good, giving me something so much better by showing the heart to push through difficult situations and showing what is possibly for humans both mentally and physically.

After the end of this era I have begun to learn to put these things in perspective and the more it lies in the past the more I can appreciate past eras and can see how they compare to the first past era I was 'part of'. To me this era will always stay in my mind as the one that brought me to boxing and kept me there for good. So many memories.

Klitschko fury
Fury wilder 1
Joshua klitschko
Joshua ruiz
Wilder ortiz 1

Are the ones I remember most for being a shock to my young boxing enthusiasts mind

 

Some of those were the tune-up fights when he had been about 400lbs or whatever.

As far as I'm concerned Fury did his job and fought Wilder and offered the AJ fight twice. Then he fought Usyk twice.

What more was there to do except the Wlad rematch which honestly didn't mean a lot with Wlad's age. Povetkin fight was interesting but they basically missed each other due to Fury's absence.
Ruiz was also offered a fight recently and declined it, didn't mean much either.

So it's not his fault AJ-Wilder never happened or that AJ didn't take the fight when it meant something.

Really it's Team AJ that created the big hole in the era.

 

Thing is, there is no Fury era.

He fought no one but Wilder. Ducked Price, Povetkin eliminator, Pulev eliminator, signed Klitschko rematch, AJ, Joyce.

Hes a very good fighter with a clear narrative of hyping himself up and distorting facts so they look like others's fault

 

Could have been Fury´s era, but he walked away from the sport. But Fury´s wins over Wlad generated a lot of momentum for British heavyweight boxing, which sent Joshua into superstardom.
Joshua then gobbled up 3 of the 4 belts while Wilder´s team were milking the WBC title. At the time Wilder regularly had the biggest viewership numbers among PBC fighters, if I am not mistaken.
Then Fury came back in a spectacular fashion, but got tied up with Wilder for 3 years. And with Joshua loosing to Ruiz, the division became a mess.

But then Usyk moved up, wiped the floor with the champions and cleaned house.