Earlier today, unbeaten IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) was a no-show for his scheduled press conference with challenger Wladimir Klitschko (64-4, 53 Kos) for their rematch next month on October 29 at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England.
According to Fury’s manager Mick Hennessey, he had car problems with a break down while stuck in traffic. The 40-year-old Wladimir wasn’t too bothered about Fury’s no-show at the press conference, because he feels that the 6’9” Fury will need to face him sooner or later.
“Apologies for Tyson not attending. All we know at this stage, because his [phone] battery is gone, is that he’s had problems with traffic and the car he was in broke down,” said Hennessy via skysports.com. “This is not the norm and we’re not making it up.”
Hopefully, this isn’t going to be a habit for Fury to miss his future press conferences for the rematch with Klitschko. It’s pretty important that the 28-year-old Fury starts showing up for the press conferences, considering that the boxing fans need to believe that the fight is actually happening. If Fury fails to show up at the press conferences, then some fans will believe that he might not show up on the night to face Wladimir. As such, those fans likely won’t bother purchasing tickets and/or tuning in on television to try and see it.
“Fury’s not here right now – maybe he’s invisible – but hopefully soon we will meet in the ring,” Klitschko said. “I can wait, I have enough patience. I’m looking forward to this fight and I hope eventually we will meet in the ring. We want to show the public that the fight is for real. If it doesn’t happen in October, I will wait. Eventually time will run out for the champion because he has to defend his titles.”
Fury was supposed to have already fought the rematch against Wladimir last July, but the fight was postponed after Fury suffered an ankle injury while jogging. Some boxing fans believe that Fury wasn’t injured at all. They think he needed more time to take off the blubber that he had put on after he had beaten Wladimir by a narrow 12 round decision last year in November in Dusseldorf, Germany.
It was a big win by Fury, as he wasn’t expected to beat Wladimir. In the months following the fight, Fury packed on the pounds and ballooned up in weight. He eventually developed a big pot belly that he needed to take off in training camp. It’s unclear how much progress Fury had made in burning off the lard at the time of his ankle injury. However, with the rescheduling of the fight, it gave Fury more time to put a bigger dent on burning off the remaining fast that he had packed on.
Wladimir just wants to get the rematch over and done with, because he knows he’s a better fighter than the one he showed last November. Wladimir didn’t throw many shots in that fight, as he seemed intimidated and terribly confused by the movement that Fury was using.
Fury circled continuously, and held his left arm way out in front of him in an exaggerated form. Fury also continually threw weak air punches designed to keep Wladimir off balance. The slapping punches wouldn’t have done anything if they had landed, but Wladimir didn’t seem to care. He just didn’t want to get hit by them.
“Training’s been going well. He’s training two times a day. There’s not much I can say. We’re looking forward to the fight. Apologies he’s not here,” said trainer Peter Fury. “This will be a different fight to the last one because Wladimir knows he has to do things differently. Tyson knows he has to do things differently to accommodate what’s coming at him. That’s why this is a lot more interesting.”
I hope for the sake of the boxing world that the Fury-Klitschko rematch is a more interesting affair than the previous fight, because that was really, really boring to watch. It wasn’t just Wladimir’s fault. Fury wasn’t doing anything either other than running and throwing punches into the air without even trying to hit Wladimir.
I’ve never seen a more boring fight at the heavyweight level than this one. Fury is a heavyweight champion now more by default rather than by him doing anything to really earn the win. Wladimir looked old, extremely old last November. His accuracy appeared to be shot, his time gone, and his ability to pull the trigger on his shots missing as well.
It wasn’t because of anything that Fury was doing inside the ring that made Wladimir so poor. It looks like an age thing. Wladimir has been fighting for a long time, and he’s now over 40. When you get old things start to go on you. I think Wladimir’s skills have eroded badly with age. He still appears to have good power and better hand speed than Fury, but he can’t pull the trigger on his punches and his accuracy is gone.
I remember how accurate Wladimir earlier in his career when he was younger. He’s not the same fighter. I’m sure Wladimir can still will himself to throw punches. I’m hoping that’s what he does for this fight, because I doubt that Fury will do anything different in this fight than the last time. There’s no real reason for Fury to change anything from what he did last time, because he won the fight.
“Normally when you look at history, when you see a hell of a good fight first time, you see a down fight the second time. The first one was a chess match but on a boxing level, it was a master-class,” said Peter. “We’re looking forward to getting it on. We’re finally here and very happy to be here.”
Fury and Klitschko need to get this rematch over with already so that they can go their separate ways. The last thing they need is to get caught stuck with letting the rematch get pushed further and further into the future with one or both of them going down with injuries.