Fury Shocks The World; New Unified Heavyweight Champ

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Tyson Fury
It will go down as the biggest upset in a heavyweight title fight since Tyson-Douglas, but it will also go down as one of the most boring, uneventful heavyweight title fights in the history of boxing. Despite the lack of action, in Dusseldorf Germany today, Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) outpointed long-reigning champ Wladimir Klitschko (64-4, 53 KOs) in a unanimous decision victory by scores of 116-11, 115-112 X2.

This was the Ukrainian’s first loss in eleven years. Wladimir never seemed to let his hands go throughout the entire fight, and Fury was keen to keep moving around the ring and not get caught with one of Wladimir’s big right hands.

Wladimir had a career low in punches landed: 52 of 231 (23%). Fury only landed 86 out of 371 punches (23%), but was consistently landing at least one more shot per round than the champion was, and most rounds were virtually impossible to give to Wladimir: that is how inactive and gun shy he looked.

There were not many huge shots landed, but there were a few. Wladimir suffered a cut under his left eye in the fifth round from what looked to be an unintentional head-butt from the challenger. The fight in the first half basically had no noticeable exchanges or excitement other than Fury seeming to trash talk the champ nonstop. The action did pick up in the later rounds.

In round 9, after Wladimir turned around and did not expect a shot, Fury landed a thunderous left hook that stunned Klitschko, but Fury did not follow up and seemed contempt to keep his hands down and continue to move around the ring, not wanting to get caught with a detonating right hand.

Wladimir seemed to realize finally he needed a knockout in the final round, but it was far too late. He landed some good power shots on Fury in the final round, but Fury did not lay down and actually started to throw some of his own haymakers.

Tyson was extremely wild in the last round, to his credit or discredit, whichever way you look at it. He was swinging for the fences like he was down on the cards and needed a knockout, which he obviously didn’t. The fight ended with almost everyone scoring the fight for Fury.

Arguably the highlight of the night was the interview directly after the fight after it was announced that we had a new unified heavyweight champion of the world.

New champion Tyson Fury (as promised) sang the classic “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith and simply amazed all of us across the world who were wondering how a man could fight twelve rounds, and display such charisma and a superb singing voice.

So, what exactly happened in that ring in Germany today? How did Wlad lose? Why was he so unwilling to throw his right hand for the entire fight? Well, let’s think.

Klitschko is almost always the taller and bigger man in the ring for a fight, and can usually manhandle and sap his opponent’s energy away while in the clinch, which he could not do to the bigger Tyson.

This fight told us that Wladimir’s poor performance earlier this year at MSG was not a fluke and was a sign of Klitschko starting to show his age after all these years of absolutely dominating the Heavyweight division without losing many rounds and knocking challengers out left and right.

In every article that will be published over the next few days about this fight, the main topic will be how inactive and terrible Wladimir was in the ring. That will be the story and its very true, and it’s a huge reason why Fury is now a champion. However, to me, Tyson Fury fought the perfect fight.

From the very beginning, Fury came out moving his head and looking very agile on his feet. Fury came in lighter than Wlad, just think about that. He looked like a new athlete in there compared to when he weighed in at about 270 for one of his fights vs. Chisora.

He switched from orthodox to southpaw well as he has done throughout his career, and constantly landed body shots while he and Wlad were in the clinch: which was the key to this fight for Fury.

Fury seemed to have his hands down a lot during the bout, but it felt like he knew that Klitschko wasn’t willing to throw. This fight was boring, uneventful, and just had a terrible punch output: but it was still unbelievable.

Watching the young man from the UK dress up as Batman and tackling the Joker during press conferences, or him just simply calling Wladimir old, boring, robotic, among several other noticeable verbal jabs landed, none of us thought that Fury had a shot: but he did it.

For once in recent memory, a fighter talked a huge game before a fight, and he backed it up: this is unheard of in today’s world of boxing. All credit needs to be given to Fury, and the simple answer to why Wlad looked so awful could be a simple one: Father Time caught up with him.

Time is undefeated, and it may have just taken another victim. Tyson Fury is now the unified heavyweight champion of the world. He owns the IBF, WBA, WBO, and lineal heavyweight title.

He is not undisputed, however, as Deontay Wilder holds the one belt that Fury does not possess: the WBC belt. As of now, the winner of a fight between the two would become the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis. It would also be the greatest and funniest build up to a fight in a long time.

It’s a new day, a new dawn in the heavyweight division after Fury defeated Klitschko, and it may be a beautiful thing for the sport of boxing. Congratulations, Tyson Fury. Many will not give you credit and simply say Wlad loss, but it was a well-deserved victory, and now you are THE NEW heavyweight champion of the world. This sport never fails to shock us.