This weekend we watched the Lineal Heavyweight champ take on an underdog from Sweden. Tyson Fury fought Otto Wallin for the Heavyweight championship. So what you say? Just another fight you say? Noooooo… this was supposed to be a “tune up” fight for Fury, before his rematch with Deontay Wilder, that ended in some controversy. Fury won a Unanimous decision but nobody expected it to go the distance. Especially the broadcasting team at ESPN.
Timothy Bradley Jr., Andre Ward, Joe Tessitore and Bernardo Osuna made the bradcast team for this event. The entire night, all we heard about was Fury. “Tyson Fury is up next”, “stay tuned for Tyson Fury” yada yada yada. Bradley was especially candid when he laughed and scoffed at the idea of this no namer Wallin to even be in the same ring as Fury. The general public would agree. But the General Public also though the same when Andy Ruiz was set to fight Athony Joshua and if you don’t remember what happened there, the underdog Ruiz won by KO! Having a one sided opinion is one thing, but to completely disregard someone who is 20-1 with good knockout power.
In round 3 Wallin landed a left hook that split Fury’s eyebrow in half. It was so bad that the broadcast booth couldn’t focus on anything else. Joe Tessitore spoke about that and only that for the next 8 rounds. If you watched the fight, you would’ve seen that Wallin was winning the fight up until the 8th round when Fury started throwing his power punches and using his size and reach to dominate the Swede.
That’s not even the worst part! The lack of professionalism was extremely prevalent when Tessitore sent ring side announcer, Bernardo Osuna, to Fury’s corner to inform Fury’s manager of the rules. DURING THE FIGHT!!! It seemed that Fury’s corner thought the cut was caused by a headbutt, but the commission watched the replay and deemed that it was caused by a legal punch. This means that if a doctore were to stop the fight, the fight would go to the scorecards that Fury was losing at the moment.
I know that Fury is the ESPN golden boy and they have to protect him but it’s ridiculously unprofessional. Otto Wallin should be hyped up and not disrespected.
Although the judges’ scores of 116-112, 117-111 and 118-110 Wallin was active and landed most of the punches and was more accurate. The experience of Fury took over and his cut was only a factor to the people watching. Fury is set to fight Wilder in a rematch on February 22nd.