Tim Bradley said he saw genuine hate on display recently for the trilogy match between WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder for their recent fight on PPV.
Bradley liked what he saw from Wilder (42-2-1, 41 KOs) with the improvements he made in his game by bulking up to better compete with the 277-lb Fury.
He felt that Wilder had no other choice but to bulk up to face the much larger Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs) because he only had a puncher’s chance in the fight.
For the most part, Bradley liked the improvements that Deontay’s new trainer Malik Scott made with him in the last year and a half since his previous fight with Fury.
One area that Bradley felt that Malik neglected was coming up with a strategy to prevent Fury from using headlocks to weaken Wilder.
Bradley felt that Malik should have come up with something to keep Fury from using this mauling tactic as frequently as he did in the trilogy fight, as he’d used it during the second fight a year ago with great success.
Malik had many months to develop a strategy to defeat Fury’s head locking tactics, but he failed to do so.
Whether Wilder should keep Malik on as his trainer after this is up to him, but it’s hard to imagine a veteran train not coming up with a solution before and during the fight to defeat Fury’s grappling tactics.
Fury & Wilder Were Throwing “Death Blows”
“Deontay Wilder came in after lifting weights, and he was worried about being bullied on the inside,” said Bradley to Fighthype on Deontay’s fight with Fury.
“I thought that might be a mistake, but I think it was right when I think about it because he only had a puncher’s chance.
“So he bulked up, and he said he wanted to deliver a powerful shot. He says he increased his punching power by 200%. I don’t know how you do that, but it showed because he was able to put Fury down several times.
“I’ve never seen heavyweight boxing like that where you have two guys standing toe-to-toe throwing death blows,” said Bradley of the Fury vs. Wilder III clash. “You could tell the hate was real with those guys. They disliked each other.
“I thought [Deontay’s trainer] Malik Scott did a damn good job,” said Bradley about Wilder’s new coach. “Wilder came out and surprised the hell out of me.
“I thought he won the first round. He boxed coming forward, and he attacked. He was jabbing to the belly and throwing a right hand down to the guts as well.
“And he looked a little bit different. He looked shape, and he looked explosive.
“In the second round, Fury caught him with a right hand over the top, so he still had those flaws in between where he doesn’t get back in position [after throwing a right hand] to pay homage to his defense after he lets a right hand go,” said Bradley.
Both heavyweights were landing huge clubbing shots and throwing the rule book out the window in the process.
Wilder showed that he had learned from Fury from their second fight, using his textbook rabbit punches to perfection. The rabbit punch that Wilder dropped Fury with in the right hand was a work of art.
You couldn’t throw a better rabbit punch than that one if you tried. Wilder had the Fury-esque form on that rabbit punch with the way he wound up on it and clouted him.
It was like Wilder was hammering a piece of iron with that shot. Upon impact, Fury collapsed on the canvas like he’d been shot. That was the infamous slow count in which Fury was down for approximately 11 seconds before getting up.
Fury should have been counted out, but oh well, this is how boxing is nowadays, and it’s morphed into professional wrestling in that respect.
Deontay Was Never Out Of It
“A lot of times, he would fall forward, and I saw that being the same issue as the fight continued to go on,” Bradley said about Wilder being out of position after throwing a right hand.
“But you have to understand that Malik did a good job mentally during the courage of the fight by keeping his fighter [Wilder] motivated even though he was getting beat.
“There were a lot of times where I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, Fury is about to stop him,’ and then boom, Wilder returns fire, and Fury is on wobbly legs. I’m sitting there, ‘Oh my God.’
“One punch can end it all. It felt like Wilder always had a chance, even in the 11th round. I’ve never seen that type of resistance in Deontay Wilder.
“I thought he was going to fade a lot quicker. Some people say he got tired in the third round, but he had a ton of stamina because he continued to try and win and continued to press forward to do what he did to try and beat a big guy in Tyson Fury.
“Fury again, smart, very smart. He made two adjustments in the fight. One of them being instead of coming straight down the middle because he was trying to close the distance when he got caught with that right in the third round and got dropped twice in the fourth round.
“He was trying to smother [Wilder] and get in quick and close the distance but got caught on the way in,” said Bradley.
It was amazing that even when Wilder was exhausted and fighting with a broken right hand in the second half of the fight, he was still capable of stunning Fury.
That was impressive. With that being said, Wilder’s ability to hurt Fury dropped off significantly after he injured his right hand in the sixth round.
That’s where the fight slipped away for Wilder because once he hurt his right hand, it made him mortal, allowing Fury to use his mugging tactics to take control over the fight.
Fury Used Headlocks To Weaken Deontay
“So what he did was he made a minor adjustment by getting his head off the line to the right,” Bradley said of Fury.
“Another thing that he [Fury] did was, and he used it in the second fight, and I was wondering why Malik didn’t prepare Wilder for this was he [Fury] was shooting a jab and coming in behind it, misses and then he’ll wrap his arm around [Wilder] in a headlock.
“That weakens a fighter and takes the legs away from a fighter. Deontay Wilder wasn’t ready for that.
“I saw he was in a bad position. Another thing is Wilder stayed on the ropes quite a bit.
“He should have stayed in the center of the ring as much as possible, and it would have been better suited. He [Fury] backed him up, mauled him on the inside, and put heat on him.
“I saw some vicious body shots by Fury on the inside, especially when Wilder would miss with wide shots. Fury would dig down in the guts. That would siphon the gas tank even more.
“Wilder said, ‘I’ve been training for this fight for 19 months. I’ve been dedicated.’ He did everything he possibly could and did it right.
“Diet, you name it, and weight training. He did everything right, and it still wasn’t good enough to beat Tyson Fury,” said Bradley.
What Wilder should have done to keep Fury from using his constant headlocks was to hit him low each time he did that.
If Wilder had hit Wilder with low blows when being put in headlocks, it would have made him think twice about using that dirty tactic.
Wilder’s decision to use Malik Scott as his trainer was a bad idea all around because he clearly didn’t prepare him for Fury’s headlocks and mauling tactics enough for him to win.
I mean, that was the difference in the fight. If you take away Fury’s mauling, Wilder would have won.
Wilder chose to use Malik as his trainer instead of an experienced coach like Buddy McGirt, who would have known what to do ahead of time to deal with Fury’s headlocks other mauling tactics.
The best thing Wilder can do right now is to fire Malik immediately and hire McGirt or another quality trainer to prepare him for fighters who use the same mauling tactics that Fury did to try and beat him.