Promoter Frank Warren has confirmed that Tyson Fury won’t be retiring after his off-performance against MMA fighter Francis Ngannou, which he won by a controversial ten round split decision on October 28th.
Boxing fans not only overwhelmingly think Fury lost the fight, but they also think he’s shot and can’t be counted on to beat any of the top heavyweights without the help of questionable scoring by the judges or the use of fouls.
The elbow that Fury hit Ngannou with in the sixth round, which surprisingly the referee didn’t see, should have resulted in a point deduction. That would have made the fight a draw instead of a win for Fury.
Warren says that if Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) did choose to retire, he’d “wholeheartedly back him,” but he doesn’t want to, and he doesn’t think he should either.
Fury will instead take some much-needed time off to rest and then get back into the gym to begin training for his undisputed championship against IBF, WBA & WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk for their soon-to-be-announced fight early next year in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Warren points out that Fury had been training almost nonstop since his fight with Dereck Chisora last December. If that was the case, he may have needed additional time because he was carrying around a lot of fat around his midsection and very noticeable hanging from his back.
Fury’s career-high weight was a dead giveaway that he hadn’t put in the proper work to take off the pounds he’d packed on since his fight with his good pal, 39-year-old journeyman Chisora last year.
It might be a good idea for Fury to have his trainer SugarHill Steward stay at his place and guard the refrigerator to ensure that he’s not raiding it during the night for some goodies to replenish the last fat that he’s losing during his training sessions.
“Until the first bell went, he didn’t know what was in front of him. Look on the other side. Did Ngannou turn out to be the fighter that you thought he would be?” said Frank Warren to Secondsout, talking about Tyson Fury’s performance against Francis Ngannou.
“He wasn’t in there with someone that was hapless and couldn’t fight, and if that happened against somebody that couldn’t fight and wasn’t what everybody said he was going to be before the fight, then I’d sit there and say, ‘Yeah, maybe your right.'”
Fury didn’t struggle against Ngannou just because he didn’t know what to expect from him due to a lack of video footage. There were plenty of former fights for Fury to look at from Ngannou’s MMA matches for him to study his form, and he had to have looked at it.
The reason Fury struggled is because he was fat, old, and style that he’s used to get over, clinching, mauling & leaning, didn’t work.
Fury can’t return to the way he used to fight when he was younger, using movement because he’s no longer young, and his poor eating habits won’t allow him. Imagine a track athlete getting fat, and trying to get on the sprinters block to compete. They’d lose every time.
“But it was an off night [for Fury]. He won the fight, and he does get clipped in fights,” said Warren. “It’s happened a couple of times in fights, and I hate to see that. He knows better than anybody, Tyson. He knows better than me, you, about what he should be doing.
“If he wanted to retire, I would wholeheartedly back him. He doesn’t want to retire, and I don’t think he should retire because it was what it was: an off night. We’ll certainly find out if it was an off night or not in his next fight,” said Warren, explaining why Fury had problems against Ngannou.
That wasn’t “an off night” for Fury. That was him being exposed as not being the fighter that casuals some adoring Fury fans thought he was. Fury has fought only two good heavyweights in his entire career, and that was an old Wladimir Klitschko and Deontay Wilder.
One reason Fury has excelled during his career is that this has been a weak era for heavyweights since Wladimir got old and retired. The only good heavyweights that have been around in the last ten years have been Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder.
Now the division has some talented fighters, like Arslanbek Makhmudov, Zhilei Zhang, Filip Hrgovic, and Martin Bakole, but Fury isn’t fighting them and he likely never will before retiring.
“The fight is on, and we’ll announce it very, very soon,” said Warren about Fury’s undisputed heavyweight championship against Oleksandr Usyk. He will fight in Riyadh. That goes without saying.
“Tyson said in the ring, ‘Get yourself ready for the 23rd.’ I’m the one that stopped that. I said, ‘No, it’s not happening. You’ve been in camp for twelve weeks. You’ve trained since the Chisora fight [last December]. I think a week after that; he was back in training. He trains every day.
“He works very hard. That’s his well-being. Physically & mentally, he does that, and he was training hard. You can’t keep doing that to your body. Your body needs a break. Everybody says it was a hard fight for him. He needs a couple of weeks off,” said Warren.
Why would Fury need another rest when he was coming off an eleven-month layoff? What is he resting from?
“This is a big fight for the four belts. Are you going to take six weeks to train for it? That can’t happen. If that had been the case,” said Warren when asked if he’d changed his mind about having Fury fight on December 23rd if the fight against Ngannou had been a blowout.
“The body needs to recuperate. Who cares anymore? It’s on, it’s signed. It will be announced very, very soon, and we’ll see it.
“He got himself on the world stage, and he deserves to earn out of that,” said Warren about Ngannou. “Something will be announced soon with him. I’m quite sure.”
