By: Sean Crose
Tyson Fury is well aware of what it’s like to be inactive. After stunning the world by besting long reigning heavyweight champ Vladimir Klitschko back in 2015, the towering Englishman descended into a world of depression, drugs, booze and overeating. After nearly killing himself, Fury – whose title belts were gone and reputation was in tatters – began a slow return. The man finally and fully redeemed himself last winter when he stopped defending WBC champion Deontay Wilder in a rematch of their 2018 throwdown. Fury’s second act, however, was far from easy to achieve.
Perhaps that’s why he’s blaming UFC star Conor McGregor’s disastrous defeat at the hands and legs of Dustin Poirier late last month on the Irishman’s inactivity. McGregor, after all, had been out of the octagon roughly a year when he arrived at the UFC’s “Fight Island” in order to face Poirier, a man he had handily defeated years earlier. The second fight between the two decorated mixed martial artists, however, was a far cry from the first. McGregor knocked his man out the first time. The second time around, it was McGregor who was stopped amidst a hail of punches.
“Conor McGregor fought in 2016,” The Daily Mail quotes Fury as saying, “then he had two years out and then he fought Khabib. Then he had another two years out, and then he fought Cerrone…then he had another year out, and then he fought this guy, Poirier. So inactivity kills the cat, no doubt about it.” Tyson summed the matter up simply: “When one man’s been active – fighting, sparring and in camps – and one man’s been on the couch, it’s no good.”
Fury continued on the matter, speaking from personal experience. ‘You lose your timing, you lose your distance, you lose it all,” he says of time away from combat sports. “You lose it all, it’s all gotta be gained back within camps and within fighting.” Still, Fury insisted that things can get better with time. “If you had three fights on the bounce after you’d never been in the ring for three years,” he stated, “in the third one you’d be ten times better than the first.”
Fury himself has now been out of the ring for roughly a year. Needless to say, he want to get back in action – likely against heavyweight multititlist – and fellow Brit – Anthony Joshua in a legit superfight for heavyweight divisional supremacy.