I have a lot of respect for both Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury. It takes a tremendous amount of heart to get in the ring and put everything on the line. They both walk into this rematch undefeated with a lot to lose, but both of these guys want this fight because they want to prove something.
They know what to expect in this fight. When you face a guy in the ring and you go 12 rounds with the man, you know him just as well as his mom knows him. You know what makes him tick. You know what makes him uncomfortable. You know what he's capable of doing. You felt him. He has pushed you. You felt his heart. You felt his will.
That's what I love about fighters and champions such as Wilder and Fury in the sport of boxing. For them, it's about legacy. The heavyweight that wins this fight will cement his legacy forever. He will be mentioned amongst the best heavyweights of all time. You have a guy in Wilder with 10 title defenses already -- tied for the record with Muhammad Ali. You have a man in Fury who has the lineal heavyweight championship -- he beat the man who beat the man, going back more than 100 years, back to Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Ali, Lennox Lewis and all of the greats.
This is huge for boxing, and if Joshua wants to act right, in the near future we can have the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis 20 years ago.
Both guys have talked a lot about what they're going to change going into the second fight, but sometimes it's hard to separate what's real and what's mind games. I feel like Fury honestly fought the best fight he could possibly fight the first time around. He was boxing beautifully from the outside, and he was making Wilder miss, but he wasn't making Wilder pay.
Tyson Fury tells Desmond Howard and Rece Davis that he was feeling stale before his big match with Deontay Wilder so he decided to change trainers and return to basics.
That's the problem with Fury. Beautiful defense, knows how to get out of the way of shots, but he doesn't always come back with punches.
So it sounded funny to me to hear Fury talking about attacking Wilder the second time around. I don't know how true that is, but I went back and studied the first fight with the commentary off, and I scored it myself. I'm OK with the draw. I know that after the fight, I was saying that Fury won the fight because he outboxed Wilder, but those two knockdowns Wilder pulled off, to me, could've evened the match. Some of the early rounds could have swung Wilder's way, simply because of the pressure he was putting on Fury by moving forward. You have to understand that you have different types of judges who like different types of things.
This time around, I believe that if Fury can stay on his feet -- if he can counterpunch effectively, make Wilder miss and make him pay, take that right hand away and avoid that big punch -- if he doesn't go down, I think he could pull off the victory.
Fury had opportunities in the first fight to make Wilder pay. Wilder is not the best guy technically, and he does sometimes get a little bit reckless looking for the right hand, swinging wildly. He'll miss, and he'll fall in, and those are perfect opportunities for Fury to counter. That's the one big thing he can change in this fight.
Wilder makes up for those mistakes with his devastating punching power. If he misses badly with a shot, you have to expect another shot coming back. Even if it's a left hook, a jab or something -- not his primary weapon -- you have to respect that power.
Wilder's power made Fury keep his hands at home, because Wilder was able to isolate that jab with his right hand. Fury was a little bit tentative to throw that jab because he was afraid of Wilder's right hand coming over the top.
The body work is going to be very important for Wilder in the rematch. He went to the body pretty well the first time around, but if you want to slow a big guy down, especially a guy who moves his hands like Fury does, you want to go down to the body.
I've seen Wilder working on left hooks to the body, and I've been seeing him throw the uppercut, as well, and that could play a huge factor in the rematch because Fury has a flaw. He leans forward.
Fury is a 6-foot-9 guy who has no business leaning forward to his right foot, which he does to get away from a right hand. He does this all the time. He did it in the Otto Wallin fight, and Wallin cut him, punished him on the inside for leaning on that back foot, which is his right foot.
That's going keep him making himself accessible to getting hit with the right hand from Wilder. If he hasn't corrected that, then there's a possibility that's how he gets knocked out.
"Fury is a 6-foot-9 guy that has no business leaning forward to his right foot, which he does to get away from a right hand. He does this all the time." Timothy Bradley, Jr.
I didn't like what I saw in Fury's last fight, against Wallin. He was hit the most times he has ever been in his career: 127 times. Wallin is a guy who was unproven but showed he had the goods to compete at the heavyweight level. He hurt Fury several times in that fight. I don't know if it's just that Fury took him lightly or -- and this is my suspicion -- it could be that Wilder took something out of him with those big punches in their first fight.
When Fury fought against Schwarz, he didn't get touched, so we didn't really have a chance to see if there were any lingering effects. Fury knocked him out inside two rounds. But when Wallin touched Fury, you finally saw how sensitive his chin might be now. I had that experience. I've been hit by big punchers in my division, and let me tell you something: When you're hit by big punchers, they take something out of you. They weaken your chin.
I can remember when I was hit by Ruslan Provodnikov. I was never the same. I wasn't able to take the punches I was used to taking in the same way in the fights after Provodnikov. The punches that I took on the chin, they hurt me a lot more. Even jabs were starting to bother me. My chin was a little sensitive. That could be a possibility here, as well, with Fury going into this fight.
His fear of getting hit could be one of the reasons Fury changed trainers -- to do everything he can to get his fundamentals straightened out. I've been there, too. I changed my trainer toward the back end of my career because I felt I needed to be a little bit more fundamentally sound. I knew I was slowing down, because of my age and because of the amount of fights that I had, so I made a change and hired Teddy Atlas, who was a lot stricter. He taught me the fundamentals that brought me back to the beginning. It helped me out, and it showed in my fights.
It's up to Fury, honestly -- it is up to the student to be willing to change. He can't be stubborn. He can't go back to his old ways. And for the trainer, his job is to tighten up against some of these areas in which Wilder is at his best. Leaning down to his left or leaning down to his right, that's something Fury always does. He needs to try to correct that.
Can it be done in one camp? I don't know. I don't think so, honestly, at least not all of it. Because as soon as you're forced back, as soon as the pressure is going, you will always default to what you normally do. That's any fighter, and that's in any kind of sport there is. You always revert back to doing what you've typically done.
Then there's the weight question. Why would Fury come in at 270 pounds? So that he can hinder his conditioning and hinder his movement? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. So he can sit in front of Wilder? The one thing that's so special about Fury is that he has tremendous conditioning. Why take that away by adding extra pounds? Does he think he's suddenly going to sit down on his punches? That he's suddenly going to become a knockout artist? I don't think so. I think it's wrong. I think it's horrible. I think it's a bad idea.
As far as whether or not he can generate more power , I'll look back to my own career. When I was a 140-pound guy, I wasn't a big puncher. I moved up to 147 pounds, and I still wasn't a big puncher. I could've gone up to 154 pounds and still wouldn't have been a big puncher. Some guys are punchers -- they're born and bred punchers.
A lot of guys out there who are not punchers. Fury, to me, is not a puncher. He's a respectable puncher -- you have to respect him and his punching power, because he can catch you at the right spot, the right moment. But he's not a devastating puncher like Wilder, who hits you on the chin or hits you on the shoulder and fractures your ankles with the recoil.
Don't come in at 270, come in at a weight you're comfortable at, a weight you're used to -- maybe 250, 255.
Wilder has talked about coming in bigger, too, and it's the same thing. I don't know if it's a game or not, talking about coming in at 230. For what? Why change it up? Why change things when it worked the first time when he came in at 213. He hurt Fury the first time, and he just needs to make sure he cleans it up and finishes the job in the second fight.
Both of them are likely just looking for any type of edge they can possibly find, but the winner is more likely to find that edge mentally. That's what this fight is going to boil down to -- who makes the best adjustment, and who's most mentally prepared. Both of these guys have been trying to get the mental advantage going into the fight. They're trying to pump themselves up, any way they possibly can, to try to find the edge.
Physically, there's also the matter of the two big cuts Fury suffered over his right eye in the fight against Wallin. He knew what could happen. This Wilder fight was already set. Fury took a gamble taking the Wallin fight, and he suffered the cuts. And him being a fighter, even though he knows it's risky, he still knows how big an opportunity this is and how much is on the line. He still knows he has to fulfill his end of the bargain, and he has a job to do.
Fury is willing to go in there about 5½ months -- I believe it's 162 days -- after suffering an awful cut. It's dangerous. If that cut reopens, it's going to cause all kinds of problems; it can blur Fury's vision, and it's going to give Wilder an advantage to be able to land the perfect right hand to end the night.
I hope it doesn't reopen, and I hope it doesn't get in the way of the fight, but if it does, it's pretty much to be expected. I expect Wilder to go after that right eye with the jab or the left hook. It'd be the smartest thing to do, and if I were training Wilder, that's what I would tell him: Go after that eye.
When I think about how this fight ultimately plays out, it's close to 50-50 for me. It's been a couple of years, and both of these guys have definitely improved. Wilder fought better competition in the meantime. Dominic Breazeale is a big puncher, and Wilder knocked him out. Luis Ortiz, another big puncher and a slick southpaw, Wilder knocked him out, too. Fury had a sensational performance against Schwarz but looked lackluster against Wallin his last time out.
When I put the pros on one side and put the cons on the other side, it's hard to call. Wilder can bring a lot of different elements to this rematch, as he's someone we know can change and adapt, but he's primarily a knockout artist -- a guy who understands how to get in position to deliver a shot where it needs to be. He has also put Fury on the ground twice already, so he's coming in with that much more confidence that he's going to get the job done this second time around.
When I sat back and actually studied Wilder, I saw the reason he's so good is his adaptability. We saw it in the rematches against Luis Ortiz and Bermane Stiverne. A lot of people don't give him credit for his defense. He's actually tough to hit. He keeps his long arms out, keeps his face protected, and while he's doing that, he's always set and in good position to punch. He has an above-average IQ. Remember, this man was a bronze medalist in the Olympics. You don't become an Olympic medalist without knowing how to fight. And in this era, I've never seen anything like Wilder with that punching power he has, standing on that 6-foot-7 frame, 220 pounds and under.
I feel like this fight is going to boil down to which fighter has the mental edge and the fortitude to move forward in this fight and execute his game plan. Wilder can win this fight by knockout. Fury can win his fight if he can outbox Wilder, and he could also win this fight by a knockout because of an accumulation of punches.
I'm leaning more toward Wilder. I think Wilder understands what he needs to do. He understands he probably needs to start sooner. When that bell rings, it's the 13th round, and I believe Wilder's going to have to pick up where he left off, attack early and catch Fury. If Fury is going to stand there and exchange with him, Wilder is going to have to catch Fury in between with one of those bombs and knock him out.
I think Wilder can ultimately get the job done, and I think he knocks out Fury inside of 10 rounds.