At an open workout Fury appeared to suggest he could adopt southpaw stance against Dillian Whyte
Tyson Fury has come a long way since hitting himself in the face with an uppercut at Brentwood Leisure Centre back in 2009.
That man, and the novice who was floored by Steve Cunningham, a boxer three stone lighter, on his US debut in New York in 2013, is now an undefeated two-time heavyweight world champion and the biggest fighter on the planet.
He has reached the top of the sport with a sharp fighting IQ. Few fighters are as adaptable as the ‘Gyspy King’, a man who can change styles at will and who is adept at finding his fighting weight – whatever the starting point,
In the last two year, since joining forces with the American SugarHill Steward of the famed Kronk Gym in Detroit, defending WBC champion Fury has added an attacking verve, the hallmark of the Kronk style, which has made him the complete heavyweight.
Fury was always awkward and elusive, remarkable for a 6ft 9ins tall heavyweight. Now, he makes his height and weight tell on opponents.
“Tyson is such a quick learner, has such an adept boxing IQ, he was able to pick up and understand our methodology and apply it in the last two victories against Deontay Wilder, stopping him twice,” SugarHill Steward, the nephew of the founder of the ‘Kronk style’, the late Emanuel Steward, told Telegraph Sport on Tuesday.
The trainer added that having John Fury, Tyson’s father, in camp in Morecambe in the champion’s homecoming fight at Wembley – his first contest in the UK for four years – has made “a deep impact on preparation”.
“John knows his son inside out, and he knows boxing inside out, and Tyson has a real connection with his father, and the honesty they share brings out the best in him,” Steward adds. At Tuesday’s open workout at Wembley, Fury teased the fact that he may operate in the southpaw stance, with Steward switching to lead with his right hand for long sections of the workout.
Yet he is an orthodox boxer. Even as far back as 2014, a year before Fury dethroned Wladimir Klitschko, who had reigned undefeated in the heavyweight division for almost a decade, by outboxing the champion and befuddling him with movement and his jab, the 33-year-old traveller from Morecambe, Lancashire, dismantled Derek Chisora from the southpaw stance with uppercuts and jabs, signalling his ability to change pattern and confuse his rivals.
Dillian Whyte, Saturday’s game challenger, was conspicuously absent from the workout preamble on Tuesday, and his spies will have noted the southpaw stance. Whyte is expected to attend Wednesday’s press conference from inside Wembley Stadium which will throng to the sound and presence of 94,000 spectators for the showdown.
Speaking to those who have worked, and work, with the boxer attribute his evolution to a change in the person as much as the skillset and nous for fighting – in his DNA from ten generations of bare knuckle boxers in the Fury family.
Ben Davison, Fury’s former trainer who lived with him for a year when he weighed 28st and had been in the wilderness for two years after falling into bingeing and depression, helped the fighter lose the weight and get his mentality on the right course again for his first of three fights with former WBC champion Deontay Wilder.
“Tyson was like a hated man after beating Klitschko, but that has changed completely and he is now one of the most popular sportsmen in the country, a champion of the people. He’s a happier man, and a happier fighter as a result, in my opinion,” he says.
Kristian Blacklock, the strength and conditioning coach who has worked with Fury for seven years, explained the transformation to me: “He had to lose all that weight, it’s hard to build muscle or strength. So the process after the first Wilder fight was getting him more specifically trained for knockouts, as that’s what he was looking for. That was strength and power. Now his base strength has built up, he does huge lifts, dead lifts, variations of squats, bench presses and in this camp he has hit new numbers, and is stronger than he has ever been. The style change to the Kronk gym was initiated by him.”
The heavyweight’s assistant trainer Andy Lee meanwhile, a former middleweight world champion in his own right, believes that “Fury has now got a world of experience, has maturity and knows the correct way to train; not overtrain, not under train, all the things he has picked up over the last few years.”
“He has been able to fine-tune things, just as he has done with his team,” he adds. “There’s no excess, there’s no one in the entourage without a purpose. It’s a well-oiled machine and he is the end product of it.
“He’s always been one of the most talented fighters in the world, but he has everything to bring out the best in him, because he has both fighting intelligence and emotional intelligence inside him. Camp after camp, fight after fight, all that has come out of him. He has adaptability and versatility.”
British boxing legend Frank Bruno, a former WBC heavyweight champion himself, says that the “adaptability and versatility” spoken of Fury and the changes he has made in his second reign as a heavyweight world champion using the more aggressive ‘Kronk style’ make this fight a tough task for challenger Whyte.
Bruno, who famously fought – and lost by seventh round stoppage – to Lennox Lewis in Cardiff in 1993 in a huge all-British clash for the WBC title, explained: “I have seen a huge difference in Tyson as a fighter, he has gone from someone who was tall, gangly and awkward to a fearsome puncher in the space of a couple of fights. Since he has bulked up to 19-20st you can see what he is able to do to his opponents.”
“You never really know what Tyson is going to come out with,” reasoned Bruno. “He can box orthodox or southpaw, he can go on the front foot or the back foot, he can ‘stick and move’ or even walk his opponent down and look for the finish. Tyson will take a fight as it comes, he just seems to adapt to every problem that he faces. Even when he gets hit on the chin he gets straight back up again. Tyson has a lot more experience than Whyte and that is maybe why I favour Tyson but if he doesn’t keep his head down to avoid the Whyte bombs then he could be in danger.”
This Article First Appeared On The Telegraph