Comments Thread For: Roy Jones Jr. On Fury-Usyk: 'A Good Big Man Usually Beats Good Small Man'

[Monty Fisto]

Jones wheels out one of the big three boxing cliches.

Is there any real evidence to back it up? There's certainly plenty of exceptions.

Dempsey (6'1") destroyed Willard (6'6").
Former light heavyweight Gene Tunney (6') beat Dempsey, twice.
Joe Frazier (just under 6') beat Ali (6'3") in the Fight of the Century.
Rocky Marciano (5'10") beat Joe Louis (6'1")
Tyson (not even 5'10") beat Tony Tucker (6'5''), Larry Holmes (6'3''), Trevor Berbick (6'2"), Bonecrusher Smith (6'4"), Tony Tubbs (6'3"), etc.
Hassim Rahman (6'2") KO'd Lennox Lewis (6'5")
Usyk (6'3") beat Joshua (6'6"), twice.

[takenotes]

Fury in his prime was a special fighter.

He beat klitschko by using a totally different gameplan of moving and psyching Wlad out with feints and ring generalship.

A 6 foot 8 man who can move like that, fight inside and out, fight going backwards or forwards, mix up his shots and put combinations together, excellent jab, excellent stamina, excellent recovery when hit.

This isn't nikolai valuev we are talking about here and "he's only good because he's big" is such a casual comment.

Usyk has less dimensions to his game than Fury. And I'll usually pick the guy with more strings to his bow.

BUT

Fury has ballooned up and down in weight, abused his body with drugs and alcohol and I don't think at this stage he can beat a super athlete like Usyk.

But....

I picked against him vs Wlad and Wilder 2 as well.

Can we dispense with the notion that Fury is or was a special fighter? He fought an old Wlad to a boring UD where Wlad barely threw any shots. He then took 2 years off and ballooned up to 400 lbs. He then beat a guy in Wilder whose best win was Stiverne (lol). He went life and death with Wallin, fights Chisora for a 3rd time (lol) and beats Wilder twice who still managed to knock him down in all three fights.

Usyk on the other hand went undisputed in CW and beats one of the best HW in the world twice (AJ). Usyk's legacy is mostly in CW but he fought better opposition and is still winning his fights in HW.

Fact is Fury is in the right place at the right time in a division that manages to be even weaker than when Wlad was champion. He almost lost against a guy who made his boxing debut and rumor was had a terrible camp leading up to the Feb 17 fight. Usyk will win a wide UD here and Fury is gonna be chasing him all night long landing nothing.

[crimsonfalcon07]

This presupposes that Fury is actually good. I'm not convinced. I think he's got an inflated record and his best wins likely came with PED assistance. We've barely seen him against top guys. His signature wins were a absolutely awful fight v Klitschko and Wilder, who couldn't be more different from Usyk stylistically. He fought about the same vs Ngannou as he did in Wilder 2-3, and Chisora 3. Pretty sure that's his current form.