Tyson Fury vs. Deontay Wilder III: Grit and Skill
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
The first fight between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury was a long game, a distance-based contest in which Fury sought, for the most part with success, to defuse Wilder by staying away and Wilder chased him down. The second was a one-sided shitkicking, where Wilder fell apart almost immediately and got battered and bruised on his way to a stoppage that was only controversial in his own head. The third? Much more drama than most of us imagined after the first two went the way it did. Why did that happen? Let’s take a look.
Preparation
The first thing we all noticed was that both fighters came in heavier than usual. A lot was said about how that would be a bad thing for Wilder, or possibly a good thing if he could stop Fury wearing on him, though it didn’t seem likely he had the technique for that (more on this later). In all honesty though, while he certainly did look stronger under the fat than other showings where he came in big, it may not have been a good thing for Fury either — whether it came from more focus on committing to the mauling gameplan, from needing to recover from Covid, or from simply taking Wilder lightly after such a dominant win last time, we cannot know, but he did seem less mobile than in his previous two fights with Wilder. Still, he’s clearly more used to carrying the weight than Wilder is, and that did tell as the fight went on.
Gameplan
Wilder talked a big game about how, with his new head trainer Malik Scott, he was going to have fixed sundry problems and set up to counter the things Fury did in the second fight, but when it came down to it, all that manifested was a serious commitment to a body jab. That did get him some joy in the first two rounds, but it wasn’t deep and as we’ll get into in a minute, it didn’t last for very long. Fury for his part, as mentioned above, seemed more committed to the mauling, attacking gameplan — something that had its pros and cons. He was definitely more technically solid and complete at coming forwards, without the big step-in shots that were very effective the first time but could have left him open to real hurt from big counters if Wilder could time one, and with more angled attacks. He did, however, seem more static in front of the big shots of the challenger when he did need to back up, and we saw that have its effect too.
Early rounds
The opening two rounds were defined by Wilder’s new body jab, but the warning signs were already there: he committed very hard to each body jab attempt — a move that not only left him vulnerable to Fury catching him off balance with a counter but, with the recovery needed each time, was almost certainly costing him more energy than he was sapping from Fury with the bodywork anyway. It also relied very much on the jab actually working to push Fury back — if Fury did get on the front foot Wilder needed contingencies for that and it wasn’t clear there were any.
Sure enough, in round three Fury seemed confident he had the measure of the move and started pushing back. About thirty seconds in, he held his ground as the jab came in, and hit Wilder with a cuffing shot around the side that staggered him halfway across the ring, despite not being hurt by it. Wilder lost confidence in his front-foot approach straight away, started being forced back, and he was right to worry, because on the occasions he did try to hold his ground, Fury would step off center line — nothing spectacular, he wasn’t Oleksandr Usyk, but at six foot nine he doesn’t need to be, a little shift to the side and he had an angle that cuts across Wilder’s lines of balance and any decent connection would wobble Wilder to his boots.
This happened several times in the third, though the knockdown came a slightly different problem — also from Wilder trying to hold his ground, but this time he tried to throw an uppercut in close which he was not properly set for, resulting in him sending himself back to the ropes, an opportunity Fury jumped on with glee. One thing to note from the aftermath though — while Wilder may not have learned to fight in the clinch, or use it offensively, he did show substantial improvement in using it as a last-ditch safety measure, allowing him to survive the round.
Then came the fourth, and with it another swing. Fury became just a little too preoccupied with just bulling in to hurt Wilder and then weigh on him, Wilder fell back on old habits of winging right hands whenever he was able. This ended up, for this moment, playing in his favour — he swung a huge one that Fury slipped under, but having stepped away and reset, Fury seemed torn on whether he wanted to come in the same again or step away, and in that flat-footed moment Wilder sent a nice sharp shot right down the middle that dropped the champion on his backside. He recovered well physically, as he usually does, but it must be noted that for the rest of the round he didn’t do particularly well technically, seemingly over-confident in his ability to recover so that he didn’t take any real safety measures to recover fully without engagement. That’s what led to the second knockdown, where he tried a rough, punching clinch to avenge the knockdown and got cuffed over — it wasn’t a hard shot, and it didn’t hurt him more than he already was, but it was embarrassing and if the bell hadn’t rung right then he might have been in trouble.
The Details Matter
After that, though, Fury got his head together and having taken the fifth to make sure he recovered, the bout became very one-sided. He sharpened up again, still pushing aggressively but making sure he took himself off-line when he did, and when the big shots came, he had an eye out and moved with them even when they did connect. What Wilder showed is quite unbelievable heart, courage and chin, hanging on through blow after hurtful blow to the point that referee Russell Mora, probably mindful of the effect of Wilder’s post-loss theatrics on his corner’s willingness to throw the towel, twice brought the doctor in to judge whether he was competent to carry on. Both times the doctor ruled yes, letting Wilder survive as far as the tenth and that brutal knockout.
Now, in the broad strokes it may be said that those last six rounds looked similar to the second fight, and in the sense that it involved Fury pushing forward and Wilder not being able to deal with that, that’s true. When it comes to the particulars of how Fury did that, however, it was quite a lot different. Last time, his aggression was through big, quite unsubtle movements — while certainly better prepared than Wilder’s jab here, he was stepping in heavily behind it, even moreso when intending the one-twos that knocked Wilder down then. There wasn’t a lot of angular or lateral movement offensively, either, coming mostly down the middle- though defensively when he got on the back foot of course there was.
This time, if anything it was the opposite — as I alluded to before, his defensive movement was curtailed and his head movement when he chose to move back was a bit stiffer than we’ve come to expect from him, but when coming forward it was a lot more complete. Those aforementioned off-line steps came with hooks and little leans that brought the shots in from wider angles — this is particularly useful against Wilder, whose stance is not well suited to absorbing shots across rather than along the line of his feet. Even in the clinch, notably, Fury was circling and shuffling from side to side, refusing to allow Wilder to set his feet. He was slipping better, too — the head movement we’ve been used to from him has been this janky, twitchy style, but here it was a lot more efficient, repeatedly bringing him in under or around Wilder’s attempts to take the lead and force him back.
The tenth-round knockdown is a perfect example of this, Fury ducking under a tired, sloppy left, taking a little step to his right, then turning in with a right hand as Wilder tried to recover, but even before Wilder was too tired to stand, this was happening, and even shots that didn’t drop him were having a notable effect. Wilder kept himself in it by always throwing, probably helped some by Fury’s uncertainty about what he had left that led to a slight wariness about extending combinations — it is notable that the end came after Wilder tagged Fury at the end of the tenth, which Fury felt but wasn’t hurt by. It seemed that the champion took this as a sign that he was safe now even from the wildcard power, and stepped on the gas, not necessarily with combinations exactly but no longer looking to clinch, refusing to allow Wilder to do so, punishing him with punches as he tried to engage, and knocking him about till he was completely defenseless against the final punch.
Thoughts for the Future
Fury is mandated to fight the winner of Dillian Whyte vs Otto Wallin, his former foe, though in truth if Wallin wins that fight Whyte reportedly has a rematch clause which will nullify that order. Ideally, he’ll eventually fight Usyk, even though he’s been pretty dismissive of Usyk as a heavyweight — that’s the fight that’ll really nail his legacy home — and it’s also the only one interesting to think about from a technical and tactical perspective. Everyone else, Fury can beat pretty much any way he wants to at the moment, but against Usyk, he’ll have to make some decisions — does he come in like tonight, and hope to stop Usyk’s circling movement with his smothering steps, hooks and other corralling shots, and heavy clinch, or does he try to nullify that movement entirely by playing the more familiar distance game, stepping away and playing with stance-switching to take away Usyk’s angles of attack? It’s that kind of thing that makes this one of the most intriguing fights going, and we have to hope it gets made.
For Wilder, the decisions he has to make are a bit more fundamental. First, he has to decide whether he wants to box on — you imagine with his pride that he will. Then he has to think about the level of opponent he wants to come back against — does he want to aim straight for the top available opponent, or does he want to cool it for a while, allow the new regime implemented by Malik Scott to bed in? In truth it looked like Scott had some of the right ideas, but just did not have the time for Wilder to fully, instinctively take them in, and certainly not to work on anything subtle. At this stage he’s not going to rework himself into a technician in any case, but it might be worth Wilder’s time taking someone challenging but a bit less threatening — hell, maybe this card’s Robert Helenius for example — and see what he can do there. He’s shown he’s got some quite unimaginable dog in him to go along with that power, though, so whatever he does, he can’t be counted out, no matter what technical failures he shows.
Epilogue
A lot of us complained about this fight happening — it didn’t seem that there was anything further to see. We were wrong about that. A true fight of the year contender that’ll live long in the memory.
Legacy? Well, Fury’s well on his way. It should me noted — must be, in fact, and isn’t — that he’s not really the idol he’s pushed by the press — the story his battle with depression and anti-Traveller bigotry should be tempered by the memory that he’s said some bigoted things himself in the past, and when pressed he prefers evasion rather than apologising or walking back. So there’s that. As a boxer, though, he’s managed to have a one-sided trilogy that threw up three classic fights, three different looks, and made him look both skilled and a total badass.
Wilder, I think, will not be long-remembered past this era of heavyweight, except as an opponent to Fury, but he’s a worthy addition to it. Yes, he lacks skill and technique, and his preparation down the years leaves things to be desired, but he’s always had better instincts than he’s credited for, and has proved he’s got heart for days. If he stays fighting, he’ll affect more than one career, and whatever one thinks of his histrionics after the second fight, we can hope he’ll take this one with more dignity and make himself a player again.
All in all, the book should close now, but it’s been a worthwhile trilogy to see.