Yunzi's Blog

Tyson Fury vs Arslanbek Makhmudov

I started writing a big post on the small/Indie web and its limitations, but decided that wasn't worth the drama. So in the spirit of writing about what you’d like to read, I decided to write about boxing. I’ve never seen anyone else do this on the Small/Indie web so here's my effort.
This Saturday on Netflix (so I don’t even need to get a dodgy stream) the heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury faces the big scary Russian, Arslanbek Makhmudov (here on referred to as Mak). Now first off, I’m really not a fan of Fury. I will acknowledge he has some skill as a boxer as well as a bullshit artist but generally I’d be hoping he’d lose. I have no real thoughts on Makhmudov but in both cases I’ll try to be objective.

Mak is coming off a win against the British fighter Dave Allen, where he took and gave a fair amount of punishment. Both men have the gas tank of a Harley Davidson and had run out by the later rounds, but both showed a lot of heart, despite, (Mak especially) leaning all over each other. His record is 21:2 against fairly ropey opposition. His skills are not top level, he’s slow with the Russian ‘tick tock tick’ style, like a wind-up toy without great foot movement. All of that taken into account, he does punch like a horse and takes shots that would floor basically anyone. He’s a scary looking guy as well and certainly in the Allen fight showed he would keep coming forward and keep swinging as long as his gas tank allowed.

Fury is coming off two losses to Uysk who I’d consider to be not only a great of this era, but an all time great whose name should be spoken in the same breath as Ali. So those can’t really be a factor in consideration. However, he’s been out of the ring 16 months and normally you’d assume Fury had been spending time with his friends, pie, pint and Charlie. Normally he would lean his flabby body against an opponent but this didn't work against Uysk who is too skilled and it didn't work against Ngannou (who arguably won) because in that fight Ngannou looked like he could overhead press Fury and ask for more. So let's assume he comes into this fight in shape, for Fury that is. Assume he’s actually trained and isn’t ginormous, just regular levels of fat. I’m also assuming that father time hasn't caught up to him too much (see friends) and he’s not having a mental health crisis. That's a lot of assumptions.

I mean all things being equal, Fury has this in the bag, he’ll dance and punch and lean on Mak, until either he wins on points or the big Russian is suitably exhausted he falls over when caught clean. But there is a world in which an aged, flabby Fury walks on to a massive punch, hits the canvas or gets so badly cut the ref has to stop the fight. I’m trying to not let my bias show, as realistically it's an easy night for Fury to set him on the road to making even more dollars fighting Antony Joshua but there remains enough doubt in my mind to make it an interesting watch.