Tyson Fury inches even closer to a world title with a dominant victory over Christian Hammer. Hammer was coming into this fight off the back of ten consecutive victories, and whilst a heavy underdog, was expected to at least test Fury for stretches of this fight. In the end it turned out to be a repeat of the Chisora fight, which we saw just three months ago.
Hammer did not have the speed, size or strength to trouble Fury, and Fury seemed to enjoy the night, jabbing away and moving back and forth between stances before the fight was ultimately stopped after the eighth round when Christians corner had seen enough and threw in the towel. This marked Tyson’s eighth stoppage in his past nine outings.
As usual with this type of ending to the night, the crowd began to boo, but the reality is that Hammer was never in the fight and predictably the judges scorecards all read 80-71 in favour of Fury meaning he had won every round on every card up to that point. Hammer did land some shots here and there, but really didn’t have the size or the skill to pose a real threat to Fury, and this was apparent after the first round.
In my opinion Fury, whilst a talented fighter, has been matched so that he cannot lose. It is apparent in his last few years of fighting that smaller heavyweights such as Hammer, Chisora, Abell and Cunningham, all of which are between 6’1 and 6’4, cannot be effective against Fury. When actually studding the record of Fury you will have to go all the way back to 2011 when he took on Nicolai Firtha to find a heavyweight who had any kind of height at 6’6. The promoters and handlers that Fury is working with seem to be moving up the rankings finding the shortest heavyweights they can for their man to look good against.
At this point I would say Fury is in the top 4 heavyweights in the world behind 1. Wladimir Klitschko, 2. Deontay Wilder, and 3. Alexander Povetkin. But how would he really fare when taking on a taller heavyweight who can punch such as Wladimir, Wilder or even someone like Anthony Joshua or David Price. That remains to be seen. It is very likely that Fury will have no options for his next fight aside from legitimate top talents and so it won’t be too long before we find out. What I can expect is a very cautious set of performances in the future from the big man, and the jabbing moving style which he has displayed in the last two outings could be here to stay indefinitely.
