Tyson Fury

Tyson Luke Fury was born on August 12, 1988, in Manchester, England. Fury embarked on his professional boxing career as a heavyweight and quickly made a name for himself, as his boxing prowess led him to become the WBC heavyweight champion after defeating Deontay Wilder in 2020. Prior to this, he held the unified WBA (Super), IBF, WBO, IBO, and The Ring magazine titles following a victory against Wladimir Klitschko in 2015. This achievement and his other victories led to his recognition as the world’s best active heavyweight and one of the top pound-for-pound boxers by various organizations, including ESPN​​.

However, Fury’s journey was not without its setbacks. After his win against Klitschko, Fury was stripped of his IBF title as he couldn’t fight the IBF’s mandatory challenger due to a rematch clause in his contract with Klitschko. Subsequent mental health issues, which led to alcoholism, recreational drug use, and extreme weight gain, resulted in Fury vacating his WBA, WBO, and IBO titles in 2016. His last remaining title, from The Ring, was stripped from him in early 2018. Despite these challenges, Fury made a remarkable comeback, challenging Wilder for the WBC heavyweight title later that year. Despite the fight being controversially scored as a draw, Fury’s performance earned him Comeback of the Year from The Ring and numerous other awards. He went on to defeat Wilder by a technical knockout in a rematch in February 2020 and again in a third fight in October 2021​​.

Tyson Fury is one of the biggest boxers in the game and utilizes his size so intelligently that it creates an unfair advantage over almost anyone he can possibly face. As one of the tallest and longest fighters in the game, he can reach most fighters where they can’t reach him. Due to this, Fury has developed an outside boxing game that nobody has ever neutralized. It all starts with the jab. Fury will utilize a constant jab as a way to control distance and score points. He utilizes a technique-perfect jab that is untelegraphed and doesn’t over-extend to allow his opponents to counter him. With Fury’s excellent distance control, he smartly shoots the jab where he can reach his opponent and they cannot reach him. In order to conserve energy and confuse his opponents, Fury will mix in jab feints. The feints look exactly like the first 10% of a real jab to sell it even further. This will keep his opponents from cutting the distance and eventually make them try to parry a jab that isn’t coming. When this happens, Fury capitalizes on this by shooting a left hook around the opening. Once his opponents are left defensive and guessing between jab, feint, and hook, Fury then follows up these options with his power right hand to do damage.

On the defensive side, Fury takes advantage of his extremely long reach by utilizing a long guard to defend punches. He does this by stepping back to create distance and extending his arms in the punching lanes of his opponent’s hands to create traffic for them to go through. He essentially picks off his opponent’s punches further away from him so that he doesn’t have the impact of blocking them close to his head or body. However, the long guard only works optimally from a long distance. At close distance, Fury still manages to use his size to his advantage by working clinches and leaning on his opponent to make them carry his weight. This leads to his opponents trying to break the clinch and Fury is excellent at freeing one of his hands and using it to punch while controlling with the other hand.