Tyson Fury was Anything but Furious in Dethroning Klitschko, But So What?

---

It is one of those eternal questions, right up there with wondering what motivated that chicken to cross the road. Is it preferable to lose pretty, or win ugly?

Perhaps boxing, in the broader sense, would have been better served had Tyson Fury, whose father named him after Mike Tyson, lost to long-reigning heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko in the kind of knock-down, drag-out slugfest for which neither man is noted. Nobody held it against Thomas Hearns when he was flattened by Marvelous Marvin Hagler in that classic bomb-trading brawl in 1985, right? But there is much to be said for winning ugly, too. If homely singer Lyle Lovett can win the hand of pretty woman Julia Roberts with its attendant bedroom privileges, if only for a little while, it gives hope to regular guys everywhere that anything is indeed possible.

As round by round of stultifyingly dull action rolled by Saturday evening at the ESPRIT Arena in Dusseldorg, Germany, it became increasingly clear that the 39-year-old Klitschko (64-4, 53 KOs), who seemingly has spent as much time on the heavyweight throne as Queen Elizabeth II has in Buckingham Palace, had either become a very old man, in a boxing sense, or simply could no longer rouse himself to defend his WBA “super,” IBF, WBO, IBO, The Ring and lineal titles with even a modicum of passion.

Related » Fury vs. Klitschko Round-by-Round Scoring

In Philadelphia, one interested observer leaned toward the latter conclusion.

“I’ve been in camp with Wladimir a few times so I know he works hard,” said two-time former cruiserweight champion Steve “USS” Cunningham, who knocked Fury down in the second round of their April 20, 2013, heavyweight bout in New York City before being stopped by the much larger Englishman in the seventh round. “He does an awesome job in the gym, but I have to say, he looked all of his 39 years. Did he get old all of a sudden? Maybe.

“But he’s been dominant for so long, I can see where it’s probably hard for him to get up the way he has in the past. He’s made a ton of money and is so used to winning, he might have expected to just go out there and blow Fury away like everyone expected. Maybe he doesn’t have that burn in him anymore. I think it was a psychological thing. Fury had talked so much trash, Wladimir might have figured here was another guy who was all mouth, a guy who was nothing more than a big clown he would shut up the first time he hit him.”

Those are questions that might or might not be answered in the future. Klitschko—who hadn’t lost since he was stopped in five rounds by Lamon Brewster for the vacant WBO title on April 10, 2004—has indicated his intent to fight on, but when you land just 18 power shots, a mere three to the body, in 12 rounds, it would be easy to presume that the inner fire to which Cunningham referred has been so extinguished it might prove impossible to re-ignite even a small flame.

Related » Fury Pulls Off Shocking Upset of Klitschko

While the 6-foot-6, 245¾-pound Klitschko ponders his next career move, the inescapable fact is that Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs), he of the outsized physical proportions (6-foot-9, 247 pounds) and previously modest accomplishments, has backed up his bold words and become “The Man” in the heavyweight division. Fight fans can debate whether he is or isn’t better than WBC champion Deontay Wilder (34-0, 33 KOs), whose resume against top-flight opponents is also a bit thin, but there can be no denying that at least his time on top should be reasonably entertaining outside the ropes.

Fury is trained by his uncle, Peter Fury, a former boxer, another heavyweight given to outrageous pronouncements and a grandiose vision of what he was capable of doing in the ring. Don’t be surprised if his nephew—stealing a page from his namesake’s book of prophesies—predicts he’ll drive his next opponent’s nose bone into his brain, or eat his children.

“Maybe,” Cunningham mused, “Fury is somebody who can bring a little more life to the heavyweight division.”

Fury either is overly full of himself or simply beating the I’m-so-great drum that some fighters employ to draw attention to themselves. But boasting like Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson only works if you’re able to back it up in the ring, and Klitschko’s lethargic performance likely raised as many questions about Fury as it provided answers.

“As round after round went by and Fury kept touching Wladimir like he had been doing, he got more cocky and comfortable,” Cunningham said. “He saw he didn’t have a real threat in front of him. It was like he was just playing around.”

Klitschko seemingly dropped hints as to what would happen at the July 21 press conference to announce the fight, which originally was to have taken place on Oct. 24, but was postponed when the champion announced he had partially torn a tendon in his left calf.

“Anybody can become champion for one fight,” Klitschko said. “It’s really tough to be champion for a long, long time. It’s challenging. It’s systematic preparation, planning and experience.”

Fury might have picked up on that telltale sign of apprehension on Wlad’s part, and he ran with it like NFL Hall of Famer Barry Sanders on a broken-field scamper.

“I’m a unique fighter, one of a kind,” said Fury, who dressed up like Batman at another media availability session. “There’s never been someone like me before in history. A fighter like me only comes along every thousand years.”

Turning to Klitschko, he said, “It is my mission to rid boxing of you because you’re a boring old man. You have as much charisma as my underpants. Zero. None.”

If there is one thing Fury is not, from a promotional angle, it’s boring. After the judges had declared him the winner—by margins of 116-111 and 115-112 (twice)—he turned to his beautiful blonde wife, Paris Fury (there’s another name seemingly dreamed up by a Hollywood scriptwriter), and serenaded her with a victory song as off-key as Roseanne Barr mangling the American national anthem. It was if he was telling the world he not only had just scored the winning goal in the key soccer match, but was going home with the prom queen to boot. Eat your hearts out, suckers.

Fury’s shocker—the most notable in the heavyweight division since Buster Douglas stunned Mike Tyson in Tokyo on Feb. 11, 1990—might have been aesthetically flawed, but it likely will vault him into the conversation for 2015’s Fighter of the Year as well as establishing him a national hero with British fight fans, who are enjoying an unprecedented period of prosperity. On the same night Fury toppled Klitschko, IBF super middleweight champion James DeGale (22-1, 14 KOs) retained that title on a unanimous decision over former IBF ruler Lucian Bute on Bute’s home turf in Quebec City, Quebec. Fighters from the United Kingdom now hold 11 alphabet world titles, if you include the IBF interim belt belonging to bantamweight Lee Haskins.

The British, more so than many other nationalities, tend to fall head over heels in love with their fighters, even when they occasionally disappoint. Until Lennox Lewis outpointed Tony Tucker over 12 rounds to win the WBC heavyweight championship on May 8, 1993, the UK had not had one of its big men hold the title since Bob Fitzsimmons in the late 19th century. Over the interim, British heavyweights had gone 0-13 in world title bouts, including 11 losses by knockout.

“I looked at the British heavyweight scene as a place I could make a splash,” Lewis, who was born in England but had moved to Canada with his Jamaican-born mother as a teenager and won a gold medal for that nation at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, said before a 1993 bout with Razor Ruddock. “I arrived shortly after Mike Tyson knocked out (England’s) Frank Bruno. Everyone was saying, `Oh, wasn’t our Frank very brave.’ He was a hero. I thought, `Good Lord, what will they do if they have a winner?’”

They have one now, a really large guy with an intriguing name, inflated sense of self-worth and a reputation-making usurping of an aging monarch who, frankly, appeared ready to be taken. Time will tell if King Tyson I gets to wield the scepter for the long term, or only until someone of more regal bearing overthrows him on the roped-off battlefield where true greatness is less the province of talk than of action.

Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.