By Bart Barry-
“Playing to strengths delivers excellence; merely fixing weaknesses does not.” – Paddy Upton, “The Barefoot Coach”
Saturday in Las Vegas, British heavyweight Tyson “Gypsy King” Fury at long last rematches his 2018 championship draw with American Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder. As the rematch will be a pay-per-view affair the next six days promise an explosion of hyperbole to which this column will not contribute.
Because neither man is what one’d call “good” at boxing. In fact, to honor NBA All-Star Weekend here’s an oldschool simile: Fury-Wilder 1 held all the aesthetic delights of a threepoint shooting contest between Robert Parish and Mark Eaton.
Because he looks the part, probably we get unfairly tough on Deontay here; while Fury fights very much like an obese gypsy in recovery, Wilder does too, despite looking an Adonis dipped in espresso-gold.
As part of precolumn research that was not exhaustive I partook of a video called “Deontay Wilder VS Tyson Fury Highlight | The best Fight” – by virtue of its viewcount and pedigree the video’s title appears unironical, and that is remarkable given how much fighting it does not have in its 12 minutes. The video features someone’s honest effort to cross-stitch a championship prizefight’s best 1/3, and there aren’t a dozen clean punches landed the whole reel.
You’ve got Tyson doing his slap-n-jiggle thing, playfully spanking Deontay’s cheek with his palm whilst his torso jiggles like it too was playfully spanked, and you’ve got Deontay, decidedly less urgent, doing his “Wilder and” Wilder thing, punctuating each quixotic tilt with a windmill right. It’s immensely entertaining in its way, though, because of the men’s simple immensity.
I recall its being way more entertaining in realtime, too, for the reason every heavyweight fight is suspenseful. Knowing what didn’t happen after 36 minutes, though, makes reviews tedious, in a way the rematch may prove.
It seems Fury outsmarted himself in this leadup as well. Much of his good scoring in the first fight concerned universal doubts as to his mettle and durability. He’d told us he was a miracle of regained character and volition, and told us and told us, but knowing he’d be chased by a giant lunatic for a halfhour or so few of us thought he’d pitch the perfect game he needed. Yet he almost did. And every minute that went by with his remaining upright favored him on every scorecard, official or otherwise; Fury got a whole lot of credit for ring generalship and defense so long as Wilder’s aggression remained ineffective and his punching stayed uncleanly.
But for this rematch Fury’s been running his mouth about an early knockout. He doesn’t plan to do this – it’s too ridiculous of a prospect, even, to be a prefight chess move – but in selling the fight in an unoriginal way Fury has changed expectations. You spend your trainingcamp citing selfhelp literature and people mistake your every retreat for strategy and in some cases courage, but you tell people you’re there to snatch another man’s consciousness, and quickly, you’re getting a lot less credit for not-punching.
Wilder, meanwhile, is a man of his word. He’s there to bean you with a fastball, and he don’t say otherwise. What’s sometimes lost in our promoter-induced squinting to see talent in Fury that absolutely is not there (shrink him to 135 pounds, call Juan Manuel Marquez and administer extreme unction) is what a specimen of conditioning Wilder is.
Until you’ve hurled yourself headlong at sea-level air you don’t realize how tiring it can be. Wilder loads his life into half his punches, misses cleanly and then shoulders the burden of stopping his right fist from sailing to the cheap seats. Missing punches is physically fatiguing as it is spiritually discouraging. And yet.
Wilder had strength and selfbelief enough to knock the dust off Fury 33 unsuccessful minutes after he started trying. We spent an unfortunate amount of time praising Fury for his lastround Lazarus, postfight, without commenting enough on Wilder’s unexpected round-12 power; Wilder merely met expectations while Fury exceeded them.
That quote at the top explains the success of Wilder’s career philosophy. He began boxing too late in life to trifle with nuance. The last American male to win an Olympic heavyweight medal, Wilder saw his marketing potential long, long before any of us imagined he’d be a unified titlist. He saw the fear in other men’s eyes – including refs’ – when he went crazy, and he kept iterating his way to the most frightful competitor he could be. That required an ability to cut a man’s lights with any punch he threw, no matter how early or late, and doing so requires great fitness.
Where an uncertain athlete might’ve found his way to Wild Card or Kronk to learn footwork or head movement or conservation of energy, by 2010, Wilder took only what he did best and committed to doing it better. If the holes in his style aren’t any larger now than when he started, they are, surprisingly, no smaller.
But what, honestly, has any man done to exploit these holes? Fury got so flustered by Wilder’s intensity he forgot to hook Wilder’s elbows on every clinch. Be not fooled by Tyson’s opportune mugging later; he was proper frightened for his first 10 minutes across from Deontay. Which is proper absurd in its own right – nature endowed Fury with a larger frame than even the top 1-percent of all men in human history, but he sure doesn’t fight like it.
Saturday I’ll be cheering for one outcome as usual. A knockout. Since Wilder is much likelier to bestow it, I’ll take him: KO-9.
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Author’s note: This column will be on sabbatical next week while its writer visits Mexico.
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Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
