Tyson Fury vs. Wladimir Klitschko won’t be remembered as a great boxing match, but it will be remembered by history as the night where the long-reigning Ukrainian champ had his belt collection taken by the wacky British slugger. The fight was defined by Klitschko’s general lethargy, but still managed to be relatively interesting through Fury’s wackiness alone.
This photo is far more entertaining than the fight itself. Photo from Youtube.com.
Fury opened the fight with a strong first round, pressing the action and popping him with punches. Klitschko was able to largely stifle Fury’s offense, but failed to fire back with any of his own. This, unfortunately, wound up being the story of the entire fight. While Klitschko was solid defensively, he just didn’t even try to land a punch on Fury.
The fight was lame, but the ring itself looked pretty darn cool. Photo by HBOBoxing on Twitter.
The fourth round saw Klitschko briefly find his timing, though, and he landed some great counter punches, resulting in his only decisive round of the match. The fifth seemed to be going in that direction at first, but Fury nailed him with a big punch to possibly steal the round back. Fury came out in the sixth with even more swagger than he initially showed, dancing around Klitschko with both hands down, but he failed to land very much, leaving the judges to flip a coin.
The second half had Fury come out swinging like a madman, with Klitschko clinching to escape each time. Most of the time it worked, but Fury shoved him off and landed a hard right hand that opened a cut under Klitschko’s eye. The eighth was downright ugly, with Klitschko stifling most of Fury’s offense, but landing absolutely nothing. It was at this point that most on social media had Fury up on the scorecards to the point where Klitschko would need a knockout.
Tyson Fury was able to avoid getting out-clinched by Klitschko, which set up a fairly decisive win. Photo by @IndySport.
He almost got just that in Round 9, landing a massive punch after another slow, unremarkable round but once again, Klitschko went to clinch but Fury managed to push him back, spin him off and land a huge left on the break.
It was here that the fight started to turn into more of a scrap…but the kind of scrap where nobody really lands anything. Fury continued to press the action, while Klitschko tied him up before any real damage could be done. There was some offense had by Fury in the eleventh, but the biggest impact in the round was from the ref, who questionably deducted a point from Fury for punches to the back of the head. Klitschko knew that he was behind on the scorecards, and went twice wobbled Fury with big shots.
Fury has a lot of hardware after this win. Photo by BBC5 on Twitter.
It was too little too late, though, as Fury ended up taking the fight by unanimous decision, with the judges scoring it 115-112, 115-112 and 116-111. While this was a big match in the ring, there was plenty to talk about afterwards, including Fury’s rendition of an Aerosmith classic.
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