Tyson Fury plans September or October ring return

By Scott Gilfoid: Ring Magazine heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) says he’s the fattest he’s ever been before in his career. Fury, 28, figures he’s got 8 stones [112 pounds] to lose before he’s back at his old fighting weight. Fury he’ll be back inside the ring in September or October. He wants to fight heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua, who he refers to as a “weight-lifter.”

That’s the big fight that Fury is gunning for when he does finally make his ring return. The good news for Fury is his voice seems to be getting back to normal. Fury had a throat problem the last few months that had him talking like he had a frog in his throat. His voice now sounds almost like his old self.

“As you can see, I’m in the fattest shape of my life,” said Tyson Fury last Friday. “I only got 8 stones to lose. I’ve got a few things going on. I’m looking to be back in September or October time. I’ve got a couple of months to try and get some fat off, and then we’ll go for a big one. If I can’t beat a weight lifter, then I must be [expletive]. There’s an old saying, ‘You can’t put muscles on a chin.’ There’s no other fighter out there. There’s only one winner in the division and that’s me,” said Fury.

The Fury that beat Wladimir would have a good chance of out-boxing Joshua and making him look REALLY bad. But I don’t know if Fury can find his way back to that version of himself. I don’t know of too many fighters that could lose over 100 pounds to get back to where they were before. When a fighter puts that kind of weight on, I think it changes them permanently.

George Foreman packed on a ton of weight after he retired. He wasn’t the same fighter when he came back for the second part of his career. Former heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries put on a lot of weight when he retired in 1904. Jeffries gained 110 pounds during his 6-year retirement. Jeffries worked hard to lose all of the weight that he put on. Jeffries trimmed down to 226lbs and looked in great shape when he fought Jack Johnson in “The fight of the Century” on July 4, 1910. However, Jeffries was too weak to put up much of a fight and he was easily beaten by Johnson by a 15th round knockout. Jeffries then retired once again and never fought after that. Jeffries showed that the weight could be taken off, but he was not the same fighter he’d been before he put the weight on.

I don’t think Fury is going to be able to take the weight off to beat Joshua or any good heavyweight in the division. I think Wladimir will beat him in a rematch. Fury’s best chance of success is if he takes things slowly over a 2-year period of him fighting tune-ups and slowly burning weight off. I don’t think Fury will do that. I see him looking to get a quick payday and then disappearing again for another long period outside of the ring. I get the impression that Fury isn’t in love with boxing the way that some fighters are. There’s a hard work that’s involved in staying at a high level. I don’t think Fury fancies the hard work and the denial of things like rich food.

I like how Fury says he only has 8 stones to lose, as if it’s not a big deal. Let’s pretend for a second that it was Gennady Golovkin who was saying he’s 112 pounds overweight. I don’t think the boxing public would expect him to melt that weight off quickly so that he could fight the likes of Saul Canelo Alvarez. That weight would need to be taken off slowly for GGG to have a chance of beating Canelo.

It’s sad that Fury has let himself go so badly with the weight he’s put on since he whipped Wladimir Klitschko in 2015. If Fury had stayed in shape, he could have fought Wladimir in an immediate rematch 4 months later for another big payday. Heck, by now, Fury and Wladimir could have fought each other 3 times at the minimum. That would have given Fury some good walking around money.

Instead of staying in shape, Fury put on 8 stones and he’s now bellyaching about how he’s got to take it off. It looks to me like Fury hasn’t made any progress at all. Over a month ago, Fury was talking about how he was training and talking the weight off. I don’t know what happened with Fury’s training, because it looks like he’s just as fat as he was when he first started yapping about him burning the blubber off. As far as I can tell, that weight didn’t go anywhere. Fury is still looking as big as a house. To be honest, I don’t understand it. If Fury had put a large dent in the weight that he’s carrying around in the last few months, then he’d be ready to burn off some serious blubber once the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC) and UKAD gave him clearance to resume his career.

Fury wanted to fight on the undercard of the Billy Joe Saunders vs. Avtandil Khurtsidze card on July 8. That fight isn’t happening obviously, and Fury still hasn’t been given clearance by the BBBofC and UKAD to start fighting again. Who knows when Fury will be able to get back in the ring? I kind of doubt that Fury will be able to make it back by September, but it’s possible. Fury getting cleared to fight is just one of the big hurdles he has to leap over.

Taking the weight off is going to be the major obstacle for Fury. Yeah, Fury can come back with a lot of weight still on him, but I don’t see him being effective if he’s over 300 pounds. If Fury takes the weight off too quickly, then he’ll be too weak to fight at a high level. If Fury gets inside the ring with Joshua in a weight drained state, big Joshua will be able to knock him over with a jab. It won’t even be a fair fight.

In looking at how heavy Fury is right now, he’s going to have a tough time getting that weight off before September or October. The month of June is gone, and that leaves only 3 months for Fury to take off the 112 pounds if he plans on getting back inside the ring in September. Fury would need to lose 37 pounds per month for him to take all the weight off by September. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to lose that kind of weight in just 3 months.

Even if Fury were to return to the ring in October, that’s still 28 pounds of fat that he would need to lose per month. That’s an incredible amount of weight to lose in such a short amount of time. It would be in Fury’s best interest to take the weight off slowly over an 8 month time frame. That would be Fury losing 14 pounds of fat per month. That’s still a ton of fat to lose per month. Fury can probably do it, but he’ll likely be weak when he does get inside the ring. With the kind of weight Fury is carrying around, he probably needs a good 10 to 11 months to take off it to where he’s not weakened.

If Fury wants to beat Anthony Joshua, then it’s in his best interest to take the weight off the right way by doing it slowly. It took Fury 2 years to put the weight on. He should take a year to lose it so that he can be fit for the Joshua fight. If it were me, I wouldn’t try and take that much weight off rapidly to fight someone like Joshua or Wladimir Klitschko. It would be crazy.