This,in a nutshell. Fury on his night can be a very handy boxer. But he is an unfit custodian of the title.
Can we give Iron Mike some credit here? I don't buy that he was with Ngannou day in and day out, but he was showing him some things. Few living fighters understand how to attack a taller opponent better than Mike.
Precisely. He thinks it is a better thing to come in unprepared, beat his man, somehow, get paid and fuck off than to prepare properly and fight hard. He's a thief at heart who has a greater love of the shortcut and the scam than he does of the sport itself.
I read somewhere that Ngonnou got $10 mil and Fury $50 mil for this fight…crazy those Arabs got money to burn & buy influence….
This is the problem. Previously a guy never would have been able to make this kind of money other than by fighting dangerous opponents. And the spectre of losing to UFC champs would become a self-preventing thing
Fury is like that guy in school who did no work ever and preferred to barely just pass than to get an A. For him that's the greatest victory. To do nothing and somehow "beat the system".
Damn and he was heavyweight champ? I think he had to put work in to get to where he is, just not all the time. I do believe in what you are saying about beat the system. A very human trait. He takes his job just as seriously as most people.
yup the comments and tweets from the MMA community were pretty bad. We've consistently had MMA fanboys who criticized boxing claiming that MMA fighters would dominate in the octagon. Now... in their perspective, they've proven their point by outperforming a top boxer in his own arena.
Agreed. The Wlad fight is probably my most annoying fight for how people view it due to all the hype and BS out of Furys mouth.
Garbage, utter garbage by both man. The only thing even remotely positive I can say about Fury is that he got up from the kd. I know highlights are not a proper way to judge a fight but he Fury seemed to control the action from what I saw.
Exactly , basically a baroom brawl between 2 goons where the deciding factor is if the bigger stronger guy can take the smaller guy's punch. If so, the bigger guy will manhandle the smaller one. No skills, tactics or abilities. Shameful....
With all due respect UGTBK, stfup and sit down The debate about the worth of the current division is definitely over now and you were on the wrong side of it. Hell even myself was way wrong about it... it's trashier than I thought it was. Much much more to be precise.
Btw, I don't get the ''Ngannou looked much better that I expected''. He looked like garbage imo, slower than I expected him to be in fact.
They had their struggles against serious boxer with credible pedigree, not some random dude who boxes part time. Hell even that is too kind to Fury, Ngannou is a random dude who spars part time .
Fury definitely ‘took advantage of the system’ in some way... Just like Wlad before him and Lennox to some extent prior to that. It’s no coincidence that these guys are NOT known for being versatile boxers and are known for looking clumsy at times while racking up points on the end of long jabs. They have freakishly large bodies and just happen to compete in the one division in the sport where there is no weight or size limit… Yes they have skill but clearly they exploit this ‘loophole’
Utter nonsense, the Klithshko didn't fought everyone, far from it in fact. When you look at the 4 champs with the most title defenses in their era, they each only fought 1, who happened to be the easiest and less threatening one (Byrd). And Vitaly lost to him to booth . And who can forget Vitaly's shameful ducking of Rachman (well everyone at fightbeat seems to have strangely). Their resume is littered with garbage man and trash, Vitaly especially so. However, at least they were professional and had great athletic capacities, which is more than can be said of Fury.
I'll give a more thorough answer to MTF's post which deserves it. I have never said this era is good, that is a strawman of my stance. I have said this era is not the worst ever and that the pish we see now is nothing new. So answer me this: Is it your take that this group we have now, Fury, Usyk, Wilder and Joshua, is clearly worse than the group of Wlad, hepatitis Chagaev, Valuev and Peter, and saying anything else is wrong and childish? Is it your take that this 270 lbs average Joe from the street (Ngannou) couldn't possibly have troubled any real champion of modern times, say, Floyd Patterson? Are these your valid opinions, or are you attacking strawman?
First of all, thank you for the lengthy response. I won't get on to your definitions of the fighters because you can do that to anybody. Saying "he is crap, come on" is not worth much. At times I find it ironic that I am blamed for recency bias since at times it feels like I am the only one who can remember past yesterday. Now of course I know what you mean by it, but I'll clarify my stance once again. First of all, I don't think we are that much apart even. When a guy struggles now, he is usually written off, and he has to prove himself again. My take is to give them benefit of doubt and evaluate afterwards how good they were. Sometimes I get it wrong: I truly believed Joshua was going to become a legend, despite the ones without recency bias telling me otherwise. Yet, I still maintain my takes that Fury is going to reach past the domestic level and that Canelo might beat Charlo, Saunders and Hurd despite struggling in some fights - all picks that have been made on this forum . I have never said that this era is good. I say it again: 1990s was much better time for heavyweight. My take is that the difference is not AS drastic as often portrayed and that we tend to make logical errors when discussing past decades. We see it in sports, politics and everywhere. What happens is that after time goes by, people create mental images of things. The details are forgotten, and we form big pictures that become fictional. About Joe Louis we remember the sizzling combinations that took out giants. The fact that he was in great trouble against a 173 lbs guy does not fit the picture. Muhammad Ali, as we remember him, shouldn't have struggled with Jones, Cooper or Norton. Mike Tyson, who according to most would bomb out all this stiffs we have now, shouldn't have gone full rounds with 190 lbs Tillis,nor ten with Ribalta. This is not taking shots against these legends. It is the reality. The same happens with all sports. About Maradona we remember the England and Belgium games or dribbling with a bottle. We don't remember the games where he rolled on the pitch or huffed with his gut hanging out. Every era has made the same mistakes. Ali wasn't man enough to beat Jeffries, Robinson lacked the skill of Ketchell but was a good athlete etc. All valid stances of their day. And it goes beyond boxing too: O'Neal would never have been competitive against Wilt and Russell, according to the old timers. So even though my eyes tell me too that the guys now are clumsy, based on all of the above, I try to look past it. I wonder, if these guys are utter crap, why doesn't any 185 lbs Marciano come out and whip them? Modern light-heavies are even bigger than that and would have been heavyweights in the past: why don't they take the hw crown, like several 190 lbs - 205 lbs guys in the past have? If the era now is worse than ever, shouldn't it be easier than ever too?
Ngannou with experience and polishing might beat Patterson (I doubt it but possible). With zero professional boxing fight (nor amateur afaik) and exactly 1 boxing training camp, he'd get slaughtered just like Rademacher (or however you spell his name) was. They were always big, untalented oaf in the hw division who had limited success by using their size (Buddy Baer, Carnera, Jorge Luis Gonzales,....) Difference is that nowaday, those lugs dominate because there is no one with any skills and athletic capabilities over 200 lbs. Hell very few of the elite hw have even 1 of those attributes. Basically anyone over 6 feet who's a decent athlete gets poached into another sport (as they get tuition, financial assistance and it's not as hard as getting punched in the face). All that's left are the rejects who start boxing as a plan B (Wilder) or slow clumsy guy like Chisora or Fury. Even an amateur boxing stud with supreme athletic abilities like Lomashenko lost to a determined but fairly average dude like Salido because of experience. Fury couldn't use his vs a novice because he s trash, just like the rest of those clowns.
OK, fair enough, agree to disagree there (I'll give my reasoning later) Are these guys also worse than Chagev, Valuev, Maskaev etc?
I don't recall this ever being the debate to be honest (at least between u), but indeed the Klithshko era was utter trash too. Maskaev vs Peter was beyond shameful for a world title fight, more similar to 2 drunk goons at the local bar ungracefully wailing haymakers at each other's. I like Ruiz (John, not fat slacker Andy) and felt he was underrated but he'd never be more than a tough gatekeeper in a good era (not a 2 times champion with 5 title defenses). Hard to say which era is ''better'' between then and now.