Hughie Fury faces Kubrat Pulev in IBF eliminator on Oct.27

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid

Hughie Fury will be trying to place himself in line for a world title shot against Anthony Joshua on October 27 when he takes on Bulgarian Kubrat Pulev (25-1, 13 KOs) in an official International Boxing Federation heavyweight title eliminator in Sofia, Bulgaria. The Fury-Pulev winner will be Joshua’s IBF mandatory challenger.

The fight will be aired on Channel 5 in the UK. This will allow Hughie to be seen by a lot of boxing fans. It’s now up to him to make sure he doesn’t blow it and look bad like he did in losing to Joseph Parker in 2017.

It’s hard to imagine the Fury vs. Pulev winner challenging Anthony Joshua. It’s such a mismatch on paper. Hughie is still far too green to be challenging a fighter like Joshua, and Pulev is too old and lacks the punching power to win that fight.

This is Fury’s chance to show that he’s not the limited gun-shy heavyweight that was trounced by Joseph Parker last year in his inept performance in challenging for the WBO heavyweight title. Hughie now gets the opportunity to show the boxing world that he’s not the same timid fighter that they saw running and clinching all night against Parker. The effort Hughie put in against Parker was arguably one of the worst from a challenger in recent memory.

If Hughie beats the 37-year-old Pulev (25-1, 13 KOs) it would be the first time in his career in which he earned a world title shot rather than having it given to him. In 2017, Hughie fought former WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker, but he came up empty in losing a 12 round majority decision in September of last year in Manchester, England. To get the fight against Parker, Hughie beat a trio of journeymen level heavyweights. Hughie didn’t earn the title shot in the real sense by facing a quality heavyweight in a WBO title eliminator. He was given the shot, and he was proven to be not ready for the test. This time, Hughie will need to beat a good heavyweight in former world title challenger Pulev, and he’ll need to do it on the Bulgarian’s own turf in Sofia, Bulgaria. That’s not going to be good for Hughie if he’s unable to improve upon the poor performance he showed against Parker last September.

The 23-yar-old Fury (21-1, 11 KOs) has fought just once since losing to Parker 11 months ago. Last May, Hughie defeated British heavyweight champion Sam Sexton by a 5th round knockout. It was a backwards type of fight for Hughie in taking his career dramatically into reverse gear, but perhaps his handlers felt that he looked so bad in losing to Parker that he needed to be brought back down to the elementary levels of the sport. It’s going to be a monstrous move up in in levels to go from fighting Sexton to facing Pulev, but that’s how Hughie’s handlers want to do it.

Hughie is taking a fight against Pulev that was turned down by two other heavyweight contenders in Dillian Whyte and Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller. Unlike Hughie, Whyte and Miller don’t need to earn a title shot against IBF/WBA/WBO champion Joshua (21-0, 20 KOs). They’ll both get the title shot against Joshua anyway without having to fight in a title eliminator. Besides rejecting the IBF title eliminator against Pulev for a fight with Joshua, Whyte has also chosen not to fight in a World Boxing Council title eliminator against Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz to become WBC champion Deontay Wilder’s mandatory. Joshua wanted the mandatory spot to simply be given to him by the WBC without an official eliminator. Sometimes sanctioning bodies do that unfortunately, but in this case, they wanted Whyte to face Ortiz in an eliminator but he chose not to face the Cuban talent. Hughie may end up getting his head boxed off

him by the 6’4 ½” Pulev on October, 27, but at least he showed the courage to take the fight instead of ducking it.

“Hughie has to train very hard to get a decision over there. He’s got to win it and win it clearly,” Hughie’s trainer/father Peter Fury said. “Hughie has got to show the world that he’s the better fighter because if it comes to a close decision, we feel Pulev will get the nod.”

It won’t be a close fight if Hughie doesn’t let his hands go. I know Hughie and Peter were both complaining about them deserving the decision in the Parker fight, but they didn’t deserve it in the eyes of the boxing public. Parker beat Hughie by the scores 118-110, 118-110 for Parker and 114-114. The first two scores were representative to the fight that took place that night. The 114-114 score looked completely out of place with the match that took place on the night. If Hughie doesn’t come to fight on October 27, Pulev is going to win by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision.

I hope for Hughie’s sake, Peter has stressed the importance of him throwing more punches this time around. Hughie looked like something awful inside the ring, seemingly running from the battlefield with the white flag of surrender tailing behind him. Peter needs to make sure Fury at least gives the boxing public’s money worth this time, because there are a lot of fans that are going to be taking time out of their busy lives to see whether Hughie can pull it off.

“Hughie’s got to be more determined and we learned from the Parker fight that you can’t just outbox your opponent,” Peter said. ”You’ve got to clearly take it off him. He’s got more spite in his shots and is more aggressive now. He’s different today to the Hughie that fought Parker.”

Peter is putting it lightly when he says Hughie has got to do more than outbox his opponent. Unfortunately for Hughie, he didn’t outbox Parker. He RAN from Parker, and stunk out the joint. Each tie Parker would catch up to Hughie, he would be grabbed in a tight bear-hug. I mean, there was no out-boxing involved in the fight by Hughie. He was purely in the survival mode looking to escape from Parker all night.

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