Tyson Fury already back in training

Boxingnews24.com

By Jeff Aranow: Following his 12 round split draw against WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (40-0-1, 39 KOs) on December 1, Tyson Fury (27-0-1, 19 KOs) is already back in training in his hopes of beating the American in the rematch to become a world champion again. The Wilder vs. Fury rematch still hasn’t been negotiated, but Tyson wants to be ready for when it does. He says he’s trying to take off more weight.

“I’m back on the road again. I’ve got to get this weight down, and get a good fight again and rock this joint,” Fury said.

Fury weighed 256 lbs for the Wilder fight, and he looked in pretty good condition. At the most, you can say that Fury was maybe 10 pounds overweight. There was a little extra baggage that Fury was carrying around for that fight that he could have shed to help his performance. The extra weight seemed to hurt Fury in the later rounds of the contest when he gassed a little bit, and ended up getting knocked down twice in rounds 9 and 12.

The good news for Fury is he’s not going into a deep mental spiral following his 12 round draw against Wilder like he did after beating Wladimir Klitschko in 2015. Fury isn’t living it up, and overindulging in food and drink. Obviously, Fury didn’t beat Wilder, so there’s no excuse for him to celebrate the way he did after beating Klitschko in November 2015 in Dusseldorf, Germany. That was the pinnacle of Fury’s career up to that point. Fury failed to get the win against Wilder, and it’s not enough that a lot of his loyal boxing fans think he deserved the win. Fury perhaps knows deep in his heart that didn’t do enough to get the win. If he had, he wouldn’t have been knocked down twice by the champion. Getting dropped repeatedly in the championship rounds is not the way a challenger beats the champion.

The question is will a better conditioned Fury help him get the victory against Wilder? Fury will be better for the rematch, but so will Wilder. He’ll be more determined than ever to knock Fury out so that the referee can’t prolong the fight with a count. Wilder wants to make sure that Fury can’t get up this time to continue fighting when he knocks him down. Fury surprised a lot of boxing fans in rising from the 12th round knockdown after being smashed by two big shots from Wilder.

Fury was not able to get up and continue fighting, but he landed some good shots as well. Fury says he had Wilder hurt in the final moments of the fight. It didn’t look that way to this writer, but that’s what Fury says. If Fury can take off enough weight to fight a little bit harder in the rematch, it could help him win. Losing weight will help Fury mostly in giving him the agility to dodge Wilder’s huge right hands. That’s where Fury needs to improve. He can’t let Wilder hit him.