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Can Peter Fury plot another famous heavyweight win when his son Hughie faces Povetkin?
It must be difficult to make a noise in the heavyweight division when your cousin and namesake is Tyson Fury, the all-singing all-dancing entertainer extraordinaire and former world champion.
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Hughie Fury has spent his career in Tyson’s shadow much like he has spent this week in the shadow of Vasiliy Lomachenko, who meets Luke Campbell on Saturday live on Sky Sports Box Office.
But Hughie’s clash with Alexander Povetkin, the Russian who gave Anthony Joshua nightmares last year before eventually falling short, is a fight to keep an eye on.
It could allow Hughie to finally emerge into a major player in the division irrespective of his surname.
This is comfortably the most difficult fight a member of the Fury family has taken on in 2019 – Tyson has beaten Tom Schwarz and meets Otto Wallin in two weeks.
Accepting a fight with Povetkin when he might have fancied a simpler task is actually typical of Hughie’s career to date. He has stumbled a couple of times and those results mean he has been overlooked but, aged only 24, he is still young.
Is he even regarded as a prospect any more? Because he challenged for a world title two years ago (he lost a majority decision to Joseph Parker for the vacant WBO belt which he disputes) he is looked at as a contender that exists somewhere between the young up-and-comers and the division’s elite.
But that is unfair on his remarkably brave progress – he is younger than Filip Hrgovic, Joe Joyce and Tony Yoka, for example, who are seen as threats for the future.
Hughie’s career trajectory has already been so accelerated that it can be forgotten how he is still improving.
Last year he lost a world title eliminator against Kubrat Pulev after sustaining a bad cut but who else accepts fights like that as a 23-year-old?
He tried to fight Anthony Joshua as a 21-year-old.
“I never believed that Peter Fury and [promoter] Mick Hennessey wanted the Joshua fight,” Eddie Hearn said. “But now I know them, they did want the fight.”
Hughie’s father and trainer Peter said: “I think as history tells you now, it would have been taken. I’d said we’d take it, and we would have taken it, and if it comes up in the future…”
“He’s a young pup who has got to come out of his shell,” admitted Peter Fury.
“He’s got to be more outgoing – with his boxing and his speech. In interviews he is quiet and reserved, and he boxes like that sometimes. Now, under the bright lights, come out of your shell and let’s see what you’ve got. To win fights you’ve got to throw punches.”
Becoming just the third man behind Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko to beat Povetkin, 15 years his elder, would catapult Hughie into a new world of possibilities.
Watch Vasiliy Lomachenko vs Luke Campbell on Saturday, live on Sky Sports Box Office, from 6pm. Book it via your Sky remote or book it online here. Even if you aren’t a Sky TV subscriber you can book and watch it here.
Sourse: skysports.com
