Tyson Fury Upsets Wladimir Klitschko

Published

9 years ago

November 29, 2015

It’s hard to improve on Shakespeare. So let the immortal bard speak to Tyson Fury’s upset of Wladimir Klitschko last night in Dusseldorf, Germany, to claim the heavyweight throne: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5)

Those are harsh words. But Klitschko-Fury was a dreadful fight that came on the heels of an embarrassing promotion that showed how far boxing has fallen.

There was a time when the heavyweight championship of the world was the most coveted title in sports. But those days are long gone. Few people other than hardcore boxing fans now know or care who the multiple sanctioning-body champions are.

Within that environment, Wladimir Klitschko offered a safe harbor of sorts.

Klitschko is 6-feet-6-inches tall and fights at between 240 and 249 pounds. Now 39, he has been the dominant heavyweight of the past decade. Prior to facing Fury, Wladimir had amassed a 63-and-3 record with 53 knockouts and been unbeaten over the past eleven years. During that period, he successfully defended his various championship belts eighteen times.

“Anybody can become a champion for one fight,” Klitschko said at a July 21, 2015, press conference in Dusseldorf announcing his title defense against Fury. “It’s really tough to be a champion for a long, long time. It’s challenging. It’s systematic preparation, plan, and experience.”

Fury, age 27, stands close to 6-feet-9-inches tall and has weighed in as high as 270 pounds. Prior to fighting Klitschko, he was unbeaten in 24 bouts with 18 knockouts but had yet to face an elite fighter. The most notable victories on his ledger were two lethargic decision triumphs over Dereck Chisora.

The second Fury-Chisora fight was particularly disheartening. Tyson entered the ring with flab around his waist and looked like a man who’d spent most of training camp eating bangers and mash. It was a dreadful boring encounter. Fury (an orthodox fighter) was content to stand back and jab from a southpaw stance, which he did for most of the night. Chisora came forward and went backward in a straight line without doing much else. After eleven rounds, Dereck got tired of being jabbed in the face and quit.

Fury’s size and reach can be intimidating. But he paws with his jab and brings it back slowly and low, which leaves him vulnerable to righthand counters. He also stands within hitting range too often with his hands down and chin up.

There are times when Fury’s mindset evokes images of the man he was named after: Mike Tyson.

Several years ago in a profile for The Guardian, Donald McRae wrote of the darkness and depression that are constant themes in Fury’s life. His father was a violent man who served time in prison for an assault that cost another man his eye. Among the thoughts that Fury shared with McRae were:

* “There is a name for what I have where, one minute I’m happy and the next minute I’m sad, like commit-suicide sad. And for no reason; nothing’s changed. One minute I’m over the moon, and the next minute I feel like getting in my car and running it into a wall at a hundred miles an hour. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m messed up. I think I need a psychiatrist because I do believe I’m mentally disturbed. Maybe it was the fact that, when I was a kid, my mother and father were always shouting and screaming and hitting each other. My dad had different women and different kids down the road. My mum had fourteen pregnancies, but only four of us survived. We had a little sister born for a few days and she died. That would affect you.”

* “I love boxing. I can’t wait for the moment I step into the ring. I feel calm then. It’s like everything has been forgotten. It’s just me and him and we’re going to go at it old school. But after that, it’s back to the reality and feeling angry with life.”

* “I’m British and Commonwealth champion. I’m doing OK. I’ve got a few quid in the bank. I shouldn’t be upset. But I don’t feel I’ve done any good at all. I thought, when the children were born, it would be a top thing. And when I became English champion, I thought there’d be a great feeling. But no. I thought, ‘Let me win the British title.’ But after I took that off Chisora, there was nothing. At the end of the day, what have I done? I’ve beaten another man up in a fight. I don’t know what I want out of life. What’s the point of it all?”

Klitschko-Fury was originally slated for October 24. Then, on September 25, it was announced that Klitschko had suffered a partially torn tendon in his left calf and the fight was rescheduled November 28.

Fury expressed confidence in the months leading up to the bout. But there was a touch of lunacy in his comments.

At the initial pre-fight press conference in Dusseldorf, Fury addressed Klitschko as follows: “Ich bin Tyson Fury, the sexy meister from the United Kingdom. I’m a unique fighter, one of a kind. There’s never been someone like me before in history. A fighter like me only comes along every one thousand years. It is my mission to rid boxing of you because you’re a boring old man. You have as much charisma as my underpants. Zero. None. You’re a wrinkled old man with a glass chin, and I am going to make that glass explode like a bottle hitting a wall. You’re fucked. I don’t care about money. I don’t care about my legacy or going down in history. I just want to smash your old face, and I don’t give a fuck what anybody thinks because I don’t give a fuck about being a role model. This clit is getting licked on October 24th.”

On September 23, Fury attended a promotional press conference in London dressed in a Batman costume, called Klitschko “a clown,” and proclaimed, “You fought plenty of peasants. You never fought The King before. You ain’t nothing. Whatever you are, I don’t know. An army sergeant, it looks like it, or a school teacher. You definitely ain’t a fighter. You’re getting knocked out. I can’t wait for this. Please, God, I wish it was this weekend.”

Suffice it to say, it’s hard to imagine Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano wearing a Batman costume to a press conference.

At times, Fury conjured images of the demented killer in a Halloween massacre movie. Other times, he sounded like a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

On Sunday, November 8, Fury told the Daily Mail, “We live in an evil world. The devil is very strong at the minute, very strong, and I believe the end is near. The Bible tells me the end is near. The world tells me the end is near. Just a short few years, I reckon, away from being finished. There are only three things that need to be accomplished before the devil comes home. One of them is homosexuality being legal in countries. One of them is abortion. And the other one is pedophilia. When I say pedophiles can be made legal, that sounds like crazy talk, doesn’t it? But back in the fifties and early- sixties, for them first two to be made legal would have been looked on as crazy.”

“To be honest with you,” Fury continued, “I know Klitschko is a devil-worshipper. They are involved in bigger circles and stuff like that and they do magic tricks and whatever. You can go on YouTube and watch them playing with magic. God will not let him defeat me.”

Next, Fury told Boxing News, “The only thing I ever regret in life is having sex before marriage. If I could erase, that then my life would be practically perfect. I regret all the filth that you do with people. I must have had sex with over five hundred women, more, I don’t know, I’ve lost count. But it’s pure filth and horribleness. I look at that now as pure disgusting.”

Then Fury added, “My daughter won’t have an education because, our way of life, we don’t need one, especially women. They grow up, they get married, and they look after the man. I’d like to give my son an education rather than being a hustler. I don’t expect my son to follow in my footsteps. I think he’s got to go to school, get a proper education, and go from there.”

For good measure, seventeen days before the fight, Fury posted a video on his Twitter account that showed him head-butting a watermelon in half and intoning, “This is for you, Wlad. I’m coming for you.”

In response, Klitschko declared that Fury had “a brain the size of a walnut” and told him at the press conference in London, “I have got friends from the circus industry. They can give you a job as a clown. Clowns make people laugh. It is their job. And right now, after watching this theater, the screaming, the running and the costumes, it is in your genes.”

And on a September 19 teleconference call, Klitschko opined, “We need to go little bit deeper in Tyson Fury’s issues. There’s a lot of psychological issues here in Tyson Fury’s mind. I think he’s bipolar. He’s not really knowing what he’s going to do next. That speaks to me as a person that is psychologically unstable.”

The fight was contested in the ESPRIT Arena with 50,000 fans in attendance. Fury weighed in at 246.4 pounds, Klitschko at 245.3. Wladimir was a 4-to-1 betting favorite.

It was a stultifyingly, horribly boring fight. Both men fought cautiously. Long stretches of time went by with neither man throwing, let alone landing, a significant punch. Fury fought with his hands down and launched long lazy punches that begged for a righthand counter. But Wladimir seemed content to evade punches rather than throw them.

Both men threw a lot of stay-away-from-me jabs rather than punching with conviction. Fury circled and moved side-to-side for most of the night, which kept Klitschko from setting his feet to punch with power.

In round five, Klitschko was cut under the left eye by an accidental head butt. In round nine, another clash of heads opened a cut on the right side of his forehead. There were rounds that were hard to score for either fighter because Fury did nothing and Klitschko, if such a thing is possible, did sub-nothing.

In round eleven, referee Tony Weeks deducted a point from Fury for punching to the back of the head. Tyson landed a meager 86 punches over the course of twelve rounds, while Wladimir landed 52. Klitschko’s performance seems even more passive in light of the fact that all but eighteen of the punches he landed were jabs and he scored with only four body blows.

HBO commentator Jim Lampley referenced Klitschko’s effort as “a truly dreadful performance.” Fury’s wasn’t much better.

This writer scored the bout 115-113 (seven rounds to four with one even) in favor of Fury. The judges’ scorecards were comparable: 115-112, 115-112, and 116-111.

After the decision was announced, Fury grabbed a microphone in ring center, accepted the victory “in the mighty name of Jesus,” and sang Don’t Want To Miss A Thing, which he dedicated to his wife.

Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book – A Hurting Sport: An Inside Look at Another Year in Boxing – was published by the University of Arkansas Press.

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Thomas Hauser

Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

‘Krusher’ Kovalev Exits on a Winning Note: TKOs Artur Mann in his ‘Farewell Fight’

Published

18 hours ago

April 19, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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At his peak, former three-time world light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev ranked high on everyone’s pound-for-pound list. Now 42 years old – he turned 42 earlier this month – Kovalev has been largely inactive in recent years, but last night he returned to the ring in his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia, and rose to the occasion in what was billed as his farewell fight, stopping Artur Mann in the seventh frame.

Kovalev hit his peak during his first run as a world title-holder. He was 30-0-1 (26 KOs) entering first match with Andre Ward, a mark that included a 9-0 mark in world title fights. The only blemish on his record was a draw that could have been ruled a no-contest (journeyman Grover Young was unfit to continue after Kovalev knocked down in the second round what with was deemed an illegal rabbit punch). Among those nine wins were two stoppages of dangerous Haitian-Canadian campaigner Jean Pascal and a 12-round shutout over Bernard Hopkins.

Kovalev’s stature was not diminished by his loss to the undefeated Ward. All three judges had it 114-113, but the general feeling among the ringside press was that Sergey nicked it.

The rematch was also somewhat controversial. Referee Tony Weeks, who halted the match in the eighth stanza with Kovalev sitting on the lower strand of ropes, was accused of letting Ward get away with a series of low blows, including the first punch of a three-punch series of body shots that culminated in the stoppage. Sergey was wobbled by a punch to the head earlier in the round and was showing signs of fatigue, but he was still in the fight. Respected judge Steve Weisfeld had him up by three points through the completed rounds.

Sergey Kovalev was never the same after his second loss to Andre Ward, albeit he recaptured a piece of the 175-pound title twice, demolishing Vyacheslav Shabranskyy for the vacant WBO belt after Ward announced his retirement and then avenging a loss to Eleider Alvarez (TKO by 7) with a comprehensive win on points in their rematch.

Kovalev’s days as a title-holder ended on Nov. 2, 2019 when Canelo Alvarez, moving up two weight classes to pursue a title in a fourth weight division, stopped him in the 11^th round, terminating what had been a relatively even fight with a hellacious left-right combination that left Krusher so discombobulated that a count was superfluous.

That fight went head-to-head with a UFC fight in New York City. DAZN, to their everlasting discredit, opted to delay the start of Canelo-Kovalev until the main event of the UFC fight was finished. The delay lasted more than an hour and Kovalev would say that he lost his psychological edge during the wait.

Kovalev had two fights in the cruiserweight class between his setback to Canelo and last night’s presumptive swan song. He outpointed Tervel Pulev in Los Angeles and lost a 10-round decision to unheralded Robin Sirwan Safar in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Artur Mann, a former world title challenger – he was stopped in three rounds by Mairis Briedis in 2021 when Briedis was recognized as the top cruiserweight in the world – was unexceptional, but the 34-year-old German, born in Kazakhstan, wasn’t chopped liver either, and Kovalev’s stoppage of him will redound well to the Russian when he becomes eligible for the Boxing Hall of Fame.

Krusher almost ended the fight in the second round. He knocked Mann down hard with a short left hand and seemingly scored another knockdown before the round was over (but it was ruled a slip). Mann barely survived the round.

In the next round, a punch left Mann with a bad cut on his right eyelid, but the German came to fight and rounds three, four and five were competitive.

Kovalev had a good sixth round although there were indications that he was tiring. But in the seventh he got a second wind and unleashed a right-left combination that rolled back the clock to the days when he was one of the sport’s most feared punchers. Mann went down hard and as he staggered to his feet, his corner signaled that the fight should be stopped and the referee complied. The official time was 0:49 of round seven. It was the 30^th KO for Kovalev who advanced his record to 36-5-1.

Addendum: History informs us that Farewell Fights have a habit of becoming redundant, by which we mean that boxers often get the itch to fight again after calling it quits. Have we seen the last of Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev? We woudn’t bet on it.

The complete Kovalev-Mann fight card was live-streamed on the Boxing News youtube channel.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welterweight Week in SoCal

Published

2 days ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

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Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.

One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.

Take your pick.

The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.

Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.

Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.

If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.

He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.

During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.

Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.

Fundora

Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.

Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.

Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.

Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.

Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?

When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.

This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.

Commerce Casino

Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.

Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.

It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.

Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?

That’s a question for another day.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).

Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).

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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

4 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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