With his acerbic tongue, braggadocios bent and frequently bizarre views, Tyson Fury isn’t necessarily going to be a hugely popular heavyweight champion.
This, after all, is a guy who referred to Wladimir Klitschko as a devil worshipper and equated homosexuality and abortion to pedophilia. He told Sky Sports that he hoped for “a bare-knuckle gypsy fight” with President Obama.
But Fury’s ascension to the throne will surely have long-term positive implications for boxing’s most popular division.
Fury won the title in a wretched fight on Saturday in Dusseldorf, Germany, ending Klitschko’s nearly decade-long reign, claiming the IBF, WBA and WBO belts.
Klitschko had a great, even historic reign as the heavyweight champion. He made 18 consecutive successful defenses and ruled the division for nine years, seven months and seven days.
He trails only the great Joe Louis, who made 25 consecutive successful defenses and reigned for 11 years, eight months and eight days, in both categories.
But the public, particularly the American boxing fans who are obsessed with heavyweights, never took to Klitschko the way it did decades earlier to Louis, who was a real-life American hero. Klitschko is a class act, a highly educated man who throughout his reign carried himself with dignity and who cared about the world beyond the boxing ring. He’s worked tirelessly for human rights and for children’s charities and there has never been a hint of scandal surrounding him.
His performances in the ring were largely extraordinary, but three horrendous losses will rob him of much of the credit for that. It didn’t help that he’s ruled during one of the worst eras in heavyweight history, but then that didn’t seem to hurt Louis all that much.
Does anyone remember the so-called “Bum of the Month Club?”
Klitschko was so dominant that opponents wouldn’t win a round against him. The bouts would morph into each other, with Klitschko jabbing his opposition into oblivion, taking few risks because none were needed.
As he racked up the defenses and the old guard of Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield retired without fighting him, the public simply tuned out the heavyweights.
That was shocking, because one thing that has long bothered anyone even loosely connected with boxing is the public’s fascination with the heavyweight division.
No matter how many great fights there were to be made and regardless of the pool of talent under 200 pounds, if there wasn’t a great heavyweight champion, a large portion of the public tuned out on boxing altogether.
Fury’s victory over Klitschko will change that. The division, suddenly, is in play, and Fury is already attracting enormous attention.
He is only one of 11 British world champions and, by far, not the best of them. James DeGale, a 2008 gold medalist, looked brilliant in a surprisingly entertaining super middleweight title defense on Saturday against Lucian Bute. He may be the best of the many British champions.
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Tyson Fury lands a punch against Wladimir Klitschko. (REUTERS) And Fury, 27, may not even be the finest current British heavyweight. Anthony Joshua, a 2012 super heavyweight gold medalist, is the leader of a pack of quality up-and-coming heavyweights that also includes New Zealand’s estimable Joe Parker. Joshua, who is 14-0 with 14 knockouts, may well be the most physically gifted British heavyweight.
But Fury has the crown, and the bully pulpit, and he’s making it chic to talk about heavyweight boxing again.
Klitschko has a rematch clause and is likely to exercise it, and that event will take on a lot more significance.
Those who run Premier Boxing Champions have to be licking their wounds, because they clearly blew it with Deontay Wilder, the WBC champion who holds the only belt that Fury does not.
Wilder won the title a year ago from Bermane Stiverne, but subsequently put it into mothballs. Wilder said after his victory that he wanted to defend it against Fury, and for a while, that seemed likely.
But PBC executives, worrying about Wilder’s brief (though successful) amateur career, wouldn’t take the risk and had Wilder face lesser competition in his next two title defenses.
Now, it’s Fury, not Wilder, who has the leverage, and he’ll undoubtedly use it.
Those who saw the Klitschko-Fury fight on Saturday could not have been impressed. It was a dreadful affair to watch, and neither man looked much like a champion.
Klitschko looked like a 40-year-old man just hanging on, while Fury was better but only because he had a bit more energy than the lethargic champion showed.
His win, though, opened the division in a way that it hadn’t been for a long time. Fury is vulnerable, as he showed when he was knocked down during a fight with Steve Cunningham, a cruiserweight turned heavyweight.
There are good heavyweights on the horizon and Fury’s victory will help bring attention to them.
Fans are once again talking about boxing’s big men, though, and regardless of the next bizarre utterance from the new champion, that’s a good thing.
