Peter Fury, father of Hughie Fury, has come out and said that he thinks that a lot of the big names in the heavyweight division are avoiding the British contender.
Hughie had his last fight in December, 2020 and won a unanimous decision over Mariusz Wach at Wembley in London. As of this writing, Hughie has now been out of the ring for seven months.
And his dad thinks he knows why.
“Everybody realises he’s a lot better than what people say he is, so that’s my opinion,” Peter Fury told Sky Sports.
“Let me tell you, we’ve offered some high-profile people fights with Hughie – and they’ve looked up and said they’ll fight anyone. But when Hughie is mentioned, they don’t want to fight him, so that’s where it’s at.
“I don’t want to mention any names, but that’s where it is. We’ll find him an opponent. He’ll be fighting in September anyway. Boxing is becoming a bit of a soap opera. That real fighting culture, there’s only so many around today. A lot of them, they are more into social media and being a celebrity than a boxer.
“Really a fellow like Hughie, he’s not a world champion, he shouldn’t be struggling for fights like he is. He’s been working on his game. He’s got older, he’s filled out, and he’s got time on his side, so it’s not been a problem for him really.
“There was Dave Allen, then David Price was thrown into the mix. That never happened, for whatever reasons and we just moved on from there. We’re going to start looking at opponents any day now.
“Nothing set in stone. We’re just looking around and seeing what’s a good match for him at the moment.
“You’ll see a different fighter altogether.”
Coming from a father speaking about his son, a statement like that should not be really surprising. While I think it is partially true that many boxers these days are just as, if not more, interested in being a celebrity than a proper fighter it needs to be taken into account that Hughie has lost every time he has stepped up against a relatively top name.
While Tyson (Fury) has the gift of the gab and a generally charismatic personality, his cousin is more low key and isn’t really interested in being flamboyant. That just isn’t his style. But unfortunately one of the downsides of that is that being inconspicuous is harder to generate interest in oneself. Especially financial interest!
Obviously I am just going on pure assumptions here because I don’t know the intricate details as to why those supposedly top names turned a fight with Hughie down. But I would hazard a guess and say that certain boxers who are in a more critical position have bigger fish to fry.
Crucially, it should be known that none of the three top championship organisations, the WBC, WBA and the IBF have Hughie in any of their top 10 rankings. So it should be understandable and logical to assume why a “top name” does not want anything to do with Hughie at this point.
But as we have all seen in boxing time and time again, things can change at any time. Hughie just needs to work hard and eventually he will see the fruits of his labour.
