Fury beats Klitschko to world heavyweight title

“Ask any member of my family – we’ve always known”. Unable to use his mechanical jab against a taller opponent, Klitschko appeared frustrated and lethargic. We didn’t have gloves, so we wrapped tea towels around our hands. Wladimir knew, his full team knew tonight. “Even In the last round I wasn’t even sure if I had on it,”, said Tyson Fury. I don’t think Wladimir chose not to throw punches because he was afraid.

“Wladimir deserves a rematch”, Vitali Klitschko, also a former heavyweight champion, who was in his brother’s corner said.

Fury, 6’9, has three inches on Klitschko, and at 27 years old he has a 12-year edge in youth.

Fury ran across the ring towards Klitschko at the first bell, a bundle of nervous energy.

Klitschko replied to an uppercut in the ninth with a big right of his own before Fury was warned for punching the back of his head. It was Klitschko’s 19 title defense and first loss in 11 years.

As tiresome as the action was, Fury was boxing beautifully and seemed to be having the time of his life.

Fury then landed a big right on Klitschko in the fifth, when he opened a small cut under his right eye, and taunted him again.

Fury’s management insisted the canvas was too soft and after much discussion and threats to call the fight off, Klitschko’s camp relented and removed some of the foam padding from the ring floor. Fury’s grasp of the showmanship involved in prize fighting, and his fresh face animating a boredom-inducing division as of late, likely means renewed interest in both the heavyweights and the sport.

“It wasn’t my night”, Klitschko admitted.

“I earned my right to be here”.

His father, who was a gypsy bare-knuckle fighter in the 1980s, named him Tyson after world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.

Moments after being crowned champion, he picked up the microphone and started singing I don’t want a miss a thing to Paris Fury, his wife.

With many predicting a stoppage win for the defending titlist heading into the eagerly-anticipated showdown, it came as a shock that the early rounds saw very little offered by the Ukrainian other than clinching whenever Fury landed shots.