Wilder vs. Fury III: Live Updates From Preliminary Fights

Before the rematch, Fury promised aggression, and Wilder’s one-punch power couldn’t save him from wilting under Fury’s pressure.

This time, Scott says Wilder can’t depend on power at the expense of other tactics.

“For the past 10, 12 years I’ve watched a guy have a toolbox and only use one tool,” Scott said. “That toolbox has at least 100 tools, and he would always go in the fight and use one, maybe two. We have to go in this toolbox and drill everything, because it’s been collecting dust from sitting so long. That’s what we did. We started from the foundation on up.”

One training camp, Wilder says, didn’t convert him from a power puncher to a chess player. Instead, he says Scott has awakened the latent boxer inside him. He says he will diversify his attack, but he is still is aiming for a spectacular finish.

“People always talk about skills when they don’t have the power, but any fighter, they would love to have power, because we don’t get paid for overtime,” Wilder said. “It’s all good and dandy to show a couple of skills, but at the end of the day or end of the night, especially with heavyweights, people come to see the knockout.”

Expect roughly the same game plan from Tyson Fury.

Sometimes, Fury says the change in his fighting style happened in the training camp before his second fight with Deontay Wilder, when the trainer Javan Hill (nicknamed Sugar) remade him in the mold of the boxer-punchers Hill had coached at the famed Kronk Gym in Detroit.

“It only took me six weeks to go from a slick-boxing counterpuncher to an aggressive knockout puncher,” Fury said.

Other times, Fury says the new game plan occurred to him after rising from the knockdown in the last round of the first Wilder fight. Fury spent the second half of that round moving forward, and blunted Wilder’s offense in the process. He carried that strategy into the rematch and won by a technical knockout in the seventh round.

But before this fight, Fury says his tactics won’t change. He aims to trade punches with Wilder and force the former champion to deal with it.

“I’m gonna go all guns blazing, full-out attack,” Fury said. “All infantry, straight out the door, from Round 1.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/09/sports/fury-wilder-fight-results