THE OPPONENT
Who is Sefer Seferi? We reveal all about Fury’s foe for his comeback fight
THERE are two ways to approach
Tyson Fury’s
comeback fight against Sefer Seferi this Saturday ( June 9) in Manchester, and its merits will depend on the approach you take.
If you take the Tyson Fury approach, the merits of the fight must be judged within the context of it being a defence of Fury’s so-called lineal heavyweight championship of the world. To treat it in this way, you must, with a straight face, see it as a continuation of the good work he produced against Wladimir Klitschko, all the way back in November 2015, when shocking the boxing world and snatching the great Ukrainian’s heavyweight belts. You must view it as his first defence. Even if it’s not.
Two-and-a-half years ago, in fact, Fury won the WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight titles, only to lose-slash-relinquish them all shortly after. What he kept, however, despite serving a two-year ban for a failed performance-enhancing drug test, was the one title that means a lot to some and very little to others. Fury, unbeaten in 25 pro fights, remains the lineal champion – the man who beat the man who beat the man – and therefore Saturday’s fight with Seferi represents more than just a comeback bout against a cherry-picked opponent drafted in to get him back on track. Instead, according to the man himself, it represents a first defence.
“I’m taking him deadly serious,” Fury said. “This is a world title fight for me. Every one of these people who come to fight me are challenging me for my lineal heavyweight status, which goes back over 200 years.” He’s not wrong. Yet, to consider Fury a world champion, and this a world title fight, we must judge Sefer Seferi differently to how we would if the fight were a mere 10-round tune-up designed to reintroduce a larger-than-life former heavyweight champion out to reclaim all he has lost. Alas, Seferi, a 39-yearold Albanian without a single notable name on his admittedly pretty 23-1 (21) pro record, is arguably Fury’s weakest heavyweight opponent for nearly a decade and the safest of all the safe options. While his stats might look good on a poster, those who delve beyond the numbers will discover Seferi has competed predominantly as a cruiserweight
throughout his career and that the one noteworthy opponent he has faced – Manuel Charr – is the only man to beat him.
For a bit of perspective, even if Tyson Fury had arranged to defend his lineal world heavyweight championship against Manuel Charr it might be considered a disappointment and a step back. Some more perspective: Vitali Klitschko, inactive between 2004 and 2008, returned to the ring in December ’08 to fight Samuel Peter – then 30-1, fresh from a sixth-round knockout of Oleg Maskaev – and regain his old WBC title.
Admittedly, Fury might have lived harder in his two-and-a-half years away than Klitschko did in four, and accumulated twice the mileage, but the point remains. For Fury to call himself the lineal champion, and for this fight on Saturday to somehow count as a title defence, the whole thing needs to be analysed accordingly.
After all, the last time we saw Fury in the ring he looked as good as he has ever looked. Composed, confident and totally in control, he did the unthinkable, effectively beating Klitschko at his own game, and hardly broke a sweat in the process. With that virtuoso performance, he set free a division long held captive by Klitschko and teased an era of excitement and entertainment. At 27, he seemingly had the world at his feet. He had the skills. He had the size. Best of all, his personality was the antithesis to the man he’d dethroned.
But then it all went pear-shaped, Fury went missing, confusion replaced celebration, and now we’re here, gearing up for what Fury stubbornly calls a first defence.
“I made it very clear from the beginning that he wouldn’t be going in with any worldbeater to start with,” Frank Warren, Fury’s promoter, said. “He’s got to get the ring rust out of his system. It’s not like he’s been in the gym ticking over during that time [away]. He’s had all sorts of other crap going on, some self-inflicted, some not, and that takes its toll.
“He’s had a lot of family stuff going but now he’s in a good place and it’s our job to get him a couple of fights under his belt and step him up to fight Anthony Joshua.”
This, by the way, is the other approach to Saturday’s fight between Fury and Seferi. It’s the mature, sensible, logical one. It pitches the fight not as a heavyweight title defence but as a chance for Fury, 25-0 (18), to simply reintroduce himself as a contender – not a champion – eager to get back down to business. It cuts through the bluster and the bravado and focuses instead on the reality of the situation: Fury, the man who had it all, was once the champion but is no longer the champion, and this is phase two.
Ultimately, regardless of how you view Saturday’s fight, whether a title defence or a tame tune-up, the outcome will be the same. Fury, providing he hasn’t lost his ability as well as his belts, should stop Seferi before the halfway mark.
It might not carry the same intrigue, but Saturday’s true main event is a WBO super-lightweight title fight between Manchester’s Terry Flanagan and tall and slick American Maurice Hooker.
Southpaw Flanagan, 33-0 (13), is the former WBO lightweight champion moving up, while Hooker, 23-0-3 (16), has been a super-lightweight for most of his career and comes off a decent win over another unbeaten fighter, Courtney Jackson, in August. On paper, the two appear evenly matched, but Flanagan, the quiet 28-year-old whose career has cruelly flown under the radar, should be good enough to win a second WBO title in a second weight class thanks to his tenacity and work rate over the 12 rounds.
Also on the card, balancing the Fury mismatch, are a number of competitive fights to whet the appetite. Liverpool’s
James Metcalf, 17-0 (9), meets Spaniard Aitor Nieto, 22-5-1 (9), for a vacant WBC International super-welterweight title, Mark Heffron, 19-0 (15), boxes
Andrew Robinson, 21-3-1 (6), for a vacant WBC International middleweight belt, Nathan Gorman, 12-0 (10), steps up in class against Sean Turner, 12-2 (8), at heavyweight, and unbeaten middleweights Troy Williamson, 7-0 (5), and Jack Flatley, 11-0 (4), clash over eight.
THE VERDICT After all the problems of the last few years, it’s a minor miracle that Fury’s back. It will be a minor miracle if Seferi wins, too.