Welcome back fight fans to another video here on The Fight Game.
Tyson Fury's participation in the sport of Boxing has always been a bit of a wild card.
His next move is often unpredictable, and that makes the story of Tyson Fury
one of the most interesting of them all.
Under the disciplinary tutelage of his father John Fury, and previously the highly knowledgeable
Peter Fury, along with Ben Davison, and currently Sugar Hill, he's
managed to become the Lineal Heavyweight Champion of the World, held every world title in Boxing,
and dethroned Deontay Wilder.
It's not that he dethroned Wilder, it's how he done it.
By way of stoppage, no questions, no doubt, Tyson Fury is the King among Kings.
On February 22nd of this year we saw a 273 pound, 6-foot-9 reckoning.
No doubt, Tyson Fury showed us what he's all about.
Before that, Fury became the Lineal Heavyweight champion by ending Klitschko's 11-year reign,
and right now he stands with an undefeated record of 30 wins.
But just how good is Tyson Fury?
That kind of question is always tricky to tackle.
If Fury was in a different era, would he even be a champion, or would there be
even less of a challenge.
With so many intricacies involved, the answer will always be subjective.
Welcome to this video here on The Fight Game, where we take a look at Tyson Fury, and question
just how good he is.
To do this, we compel ourselves to a series of categories, Power, Speed, Intelligence,
and Laudabiltiy.
In each Category I give my own personal ranking out of 10.
With 10 being exceptional, 5 being average, and 0 being
poor.
You're more than welcome to give your own ranking of Tyson Fury in the comment section
below.
We begin with Power.
[TITLE: POWER] Tyson Fury isn't known for knockout power,
but there's no way Tyson Fury punches soft.
Any man who weighs more than 270 pounds is going to hit hard.
Fury has more wins by knockout than he does by decision.
But even still, in the grand scheme of things we don't often see a knockout artist when
we look at Tyson Fury.
However, if we looked at Canelo Alvarez, we'd probably say yes, Canelo hits hard.
But Tyson Fury actually has a higher knockout percentage ratio than Canelo.
Perhaps Fury hits harder than what most people like to give credit for.
Another thing we have to mention is Fury's mentality going into fights.
Fury often goes into a fight with the intention of out-boxing his opponent.
This was no truer than his duality against Deontay Wilder.
When Fury entered the first fight, his intentions were to box.
But when the second fight came along, his intentions were
to knock Wilder out.
The first fight ended in a draw, the second fight ended in a stoppage for Tyson Fury.
So that begs the question, if Tyson Fury had entered every
fight with the mentality to knock his opponent out, would we today be talking about Tyson
Fury as a knockout artist?
So as far as Power goes, I think it's fair to say he hits reasonably hard, at least when
he wants to.
He doesn't hit as hard as Anthony Joshua or Deontay Wilder though.
I give Tyson Fury's Power a ranking of 7.5 out of 10.
Next up, Speed.
[TITLE: SPEED] When it comes to speed, Fury's got it in abundance.
He's very fast, but not only that, it's his sheer size that makes his speed a wonder to
the fans.
For a man of that size, to move in that way, is an athletic freak
of nature.
So speed, yes, Fury's got plenty of it.
Fury is very sharp both physically and mentally in the ring.
The communication that his skills display in tandem
with his mind makes Fury a once-in-a-generation type fighter.
He's much faster than Wilder, he's much faster than Joshua, he's got better footwork than
them both too, perhaps the only man that really challenges Fury's speed and footwork is Usyk.
I give Fury a ranking of 9.5 out of 10 for Speed.
Ultimately, we move on to Intelligence.
[TITLE: INTELLIGENCE]
Intelligence is no doubt Tyson Fury's forte.
Ring Intelligence, the ability to find and create situations in the ring to support a
victory, is something Fury epitomizes.
I could easily talk for ages about Fury's Ring intelligence, but the video would likely
be too long, but there's still plenty we can highlight without going too much into detail.
I will break Tyson Fury's Intelligence up into three parts, Physical Awareness, Ring
Awareness, and Situational Awareness.
Let's take a look at Physical Awareness, which can be defined as one's ability to understand
their own body.
After Fury beat Klitschko, he went up in weight to over 400 pounds and
suffered with depression, which has already been documented extensively so I won't talk
too much about it.
You'll see a lot of boxers gain weight in retirement, and this is no doubt
due to the fact that they've been making weight with strict diets all their lives.
However to come back down into fight shape takes some serious dedication, and that's
what Fury did.
With the help of trainer Ben Davison, Fury managed to lose around 150 pounds for his
comeback and title fight against Deontay Wilder.
Then, in the rematch against Wilder, Fury decided not to enter the same weight as he
did in the first fight.
Instead, he gained 17 pounds and was able to push Wilder back with ease.
Not only this, but he retained his fitness and improved his strength with weight gain.
To vary your weight to coincide with the way in which you wish to perform requires a good
understanding of your own body.
The lighter weight was optimal for out-boxing Wilder, and the heavier weight was optimal
for walking down Wilder, which was what happened in both cases.
Some other examples of Physical Awareness include Canelo when he moved up from 160 to
175 pounds to fight Kovalev while retaining fitness and improving strength.
An example of weak Physical Awareness would include Wilder who gained too much weight
for the rematch and in turn was slow and sluggish.
Next up we have Ring Awareness.
It's no doubt that Fury's fundamentals reside in his boxing skills.
One component of Fury's Ring Intelligence is Rhythmic Deception.
Watch Fury here, he extends his left arm to measure Wilder up, he jumps back, resulting
in Wilder relaxing, then Fury capitalizes and comes back in with a straight one-two,
then finishes Wilder off to win the fight.
Fury also utilizes Vision Obfuscation.
He uses his lead hand to occupy the vision of his opponent.
He leaves his left hand extended, covering his opponents eyes, and
from this he can change his positioning, or let go of an attack.
Fury also likes to flick his jab to trigger an opening from his opponent.
We've also seen this from other boxers such as Canelo Alvarez.
Fury's feints channel his herky-jerky style, he moves in unpredictable directions, making
him difficult to time.
He often throws combinations off of feints.
The deceptive use of feints is the artistry of intelligent boxing.
Lastly, we have Situational Awareness.
I'm going to show but one example of Fury's intelligence outside the ring.
Watch this.
In the post-fight press conference of the Wilder rematch, Fury was brought a bottle
of water by trainer Andy Lee.
Fury asked who gave him the bottle, and since Fury did not
recognize who it was from, he denied the water bottle.
This is such a simple action on the surface, but if you haven't guessed already, he denied
the water just in case someone put something in his drink to make him fail
a drug test.
Even after one of the biggest nights of his career, Tyson Fury was focused as ever.
I give Tyson Fury's Intelligence ranking an exceptional 10 out of 10.
Lastly we have Laudability.
[TITLE: LAUDABILITY]
Laudability is defined as how worthy Fury is of praise when considering other factors
we haven't mentioned yet.
Let's take a look at some accomplishments that come into play when evaluating Tyson
Fury's caliber.
He's undefeated, that tells you all you need to know about his standing.
He's yet to meet the man to beat him.
He can be knocked down, bruised, but Tyson Fury has always found a way to win.
He's also the Lineal Champion.
The Lineal Title can be tricky to understand in boxing, the Lineal title is a concept among
fans of the sport to articulate the man at the top of the chain of the heavyweight
command.
A Lineal Champion comes from a passing-of-the-torch event where the Lineal Champion loses to an
opponent, or when a new lineage is established after a previous Lineal champion
has been retired for some time.
Some great boxers who held the Lineal title include the likes of Muhammad Ali, George
Foreman, Joe Frazier, Floyd Patterson, Ezzard Charles and Jack Dempsey.
There are boxers who have retired as the Lineal Champion and never passed the title on.
Lennox Lewis is the Lineal Champion from the 2001 to 2004 lineage.
Rocky Marciano is the Lineal Champion from the 1952 to 1956 lineage.
Gene Tunney is the Lineal Champion from the 1926 to 1928 lineage.
Since he beat Klitschko who was the Lineal Champion from 2009, Tyson Fury is now the
reigning Lineal Champion from 2015 to present.
Not only that, but he has showed remarkable dedication to training, coming from being
150 pounds overweight, crawling out of depression, to come back and dethrone the so-called baddest
man on the planet.
A man's got to be made from a certain material to achieve such a feat like that.
It's one of the greatest comebacks in sport.
However there are two things missing from Fury's career, to become undisputed, and to
make a title defense.
Therefor I give Fury's Laudability a ranking of 9 out of 10.
So therefor I have Fury's fighter ranking at an overall 9 out of 10.
Close to exceptional, but not quite there yet.
Of course if Fury was to successfully defend his title against Joshua,
and consequently become an undisputed champion, perhaps we should then revisit these rankings.
So, what do you guys think?
How do you rank Tyson Fury as a fighter?
Do you disagree with these rankings?
Let us know in the comment section below.
Thanks for watching, we hope you enjoyed this video and if you did consider
giving it a like as it helps us grow the channel.
We'll see you in the next video here on The Fight Game.