Last month in Saudi Arabia, heavyweights Otto Wallin and Deontay Wilder saw action in separate fights on the ‘Day of Reckoning’ card.
In the co-featured, Wilder suffered an upset loss when he was outboxed over twelve rounds by fellow former world champion Joseph Parker. In the main event, Wallin was battered and stopped in five rounds by Anthony Joshua.
WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury holds a twelve round decision win over Wallin, and two hard-fought stoppage wins over Wilder.
John Fury, father of Tyson, was an interested observer in the ‘Day of Reckoning’ card.
He felt Wallin and Wilder were not the same fighters who Tyson defeated several years earlier.
“Otto Wallin was sh!t scared of Anthony Joshua. Fair play to AJ, he looked like a man on a mission. Wallin never turned up, just like Deontay Wilder never [did against Joseph Parker],” John Fury told Seconds Out.
“I’ve never seen anything as bad as Wilder in my life. I was looking at two different people in Wallin and Wilder – those were not the people who fought Tyson. Tyson probably took everything out of them.”
The 35-year-old Fury is scheduled to return to the ring on February 17, in a high-stakes undisputed fight against IBO, WBA, WBO, IBF Oleksandr Usyk.
Last October, Fury had a lackluster performance against MMA veteran Francis Ngannou in a crossover boxing match.
Usyk is a completely different kind of fighter in terms of size and abilities.
Father John has already cautioned his son to make the necessary adjustments to overcome a fighter with the style of Usyk.
“He needs a different style altogether with Usyk, he’s totally different. If you go back to, many years ago, you can watch it on the internet, it’s Gerry Cooney-Michael Spinks,” John Fury said.
“Michael Spinks is a blown-up light-heavyweight weighing just over fourteen stone at the time. Gerry Cooney is six-foot-seven, eighteen stone, look what happened. These are speed-men, you just can’t have that straight-up, going forward, looking to land a bomb on these kind of fighters because guess what? They can see it coming and they will avoid it.
“Usyk is very good, he is a good mover, he’s got a brain, he’s got good footwork and the style for Deontay Wilder and Francis Ngannou isn’t going to cut it for a man like Usyk.”