Analyst Teddy Atlas believes the winning game plan for Tyson Fury to defeat Oleksandr Usyk this Saturday is to stay on the outside, jab, and retreat to prevent his smaller opponent from utilizing his counter-punching on the inside.
Atlas feels WBC heavyweight champion Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) can win if he uses his long reach to limit IBF/WBA/WBO champ Usyk’s opportunities to land his counters.
The former trainer Atlas believes Fury has nimble enough footwork to keep Usyk from quickly closing the distance to land his shots.
It’s unclear if Atlas has been watching any of Fury’s fights in the last seven years because his mobility is gone, and ain’t coming back unless he finds a troth filled with the waters of the Fountain of Youth.
The Fury that beat Wladimir Klitschko in 2015 no longer exists, and no amount of weight loss is bringing him back.
The Ngannou Excuse: Carrying Water for Fury?
“The thing with Fury is he has a choice. Usyk doesn’t have a lot of choices. He can go and impose his physicality and his will, or he can stay on the outside, or he can stay on the outside with his great wingspan, his great size, and he can control you with the jab from the outside. That’s the one thing that won the Ngannou fight,” said boxing expert Teddy Atlas to DAZN Boxing, gushing about Tyson Fury.
Fury can’t stay on the outside and win because he doesn’t possess a good jab, and he’s incapable of throwing power shots from long range like Deontay Wilder does.
Most of Fury’s power punches are thrown from medium to close range, and many of them are clubbing shots with the back of his hand. Nowadays, Fury does most of his best work in the clinch with his holding & hitting and clubbing punches. He doesn’t fight on the outside, and he certainly doesn’t win fights by jabbing.
“Ngannou, I know there’s an asterisk, but that wasn’t Fury,” said Atlas. “He wasn’t mentally ready. He wasn’t mentally there that night because he wasn’t taking him seriously. When you’re not mentally into it, you’ve got a problem,” said Atlas, sounding like he’s carrying water for Fury, coming up with excuses for his poor performance against Ngannou.
Atlas sounds like he didn’t watch the Fury vs. Ngannou fight, and if he did, he had no clue what he was watching. The real the 35-year-old Fury struggled against Ngannou is because his game at this late stage of his career is mauling.
Fury couldn’t do that against the 270+ lb stonewall Ngannou because he was more powerful than he was, and he couldn’t lean or club him the way he’d done against his other opponents.
Once Fury’s mauling was taken away from him, the only thing he could do was throw feeble-looking jabs from the outside, which couldn’t keep Ngannou off, and he got beaten by the MMA guy.
The only reason Fury won is because the judges bailed him out with a controversial decision. He lost that fight, but the judges gave him a controversial decision. Atlas may not want to admit it, but Fury got old, and he was never as good as the sheep thought he was to begin with.
“It’s hard to change. When he [Fury] got dropped in the third round, it was like, ‘Now, I’m going to fight.’ No, you didn’t come there to fight. It’s kind of hard to now get ready when you’ve been dropped. He won the fight by keeping him at range and keeping Ngannou from using his power,” said Atlas.
The Game Plan: Keep Usyk at Bay
“If I was with Fury, I’d have him staying on the outside. What does Usyk do well? He counter-punches,” said Atlas. “He’s got to have someone close enough to him to counter. If you stay. If you stay on the outside with that reach from here to over there with Fury, there’s nothing to counter.”
Atlas’ game plan for Fury is useless because it won’t work because he can’t stay on the outside against a master boxer like Usyk because he’ll get picked apart and look silly. Unless the judges save Fury again, he’s going to lose a lopsided decision on Saturday night.
“If Usyk tries to come in close, you go back 12 inches. If he [Fury] controls the range with that jab, it’s going to make it a very difficult night for Usyk to close those gaps and do what he does so well. Give angles, counter-punch, and put combinations together,” said Atlas, sounding like a Fury fanboy.
