GUEST COLUMN
Steve Cunningham on facing Fury
GOING into my fight with Tyson Fury in April 2013, I was convinced he couldn’t beat me. That was my mindset. My trainer, brother Naazim (Richardson), instilled that in me. He said, “He can’t outbox you, he can’t touch you.” I thought the same. And yet, because my last fight against Tomasz Adamek was such a robbery, I felt I had to show I was winning rounds big against Fury. I knew everyone was looking for someone to challenge Wladimir Klitschko. But with me being one of the smallest heavyweights, if not the smallest heavyweight, and not being a knockout artist, it’s fair to say nobody was looking at Steven Cunningham and saying, “Oh, man, he can test Wladimir.”
So, I had to show them. I gave them pure boxing in the Adamek fight, but they didn’t want that as a heavyweight, I felt.
I had to show them a little more banging in the Fury fight. My trainer, though, wanted me to box. And he was right. But I’m always thinking about how the judges are seeing things and I didn’t know they had me ahead at the time of the stoppage. I only knew I was doing good.
When I knocked Fury down in round two I was thinking, ‘stay down, stay down, stay down.’ Then I saw him get up and I was like, “Okay, let’s go back to work.”
But I knew I could hurt him now. I just needed to line up another good shot.
And I did. I hit him with another right hand in the next round that really hurt him. I thought, okay, line him up again.
He then switched up his game a bit. More than that, I wanted to get that knockout and make a statement as a heavyweight. I wanted to say, “I’m here, I can beat these big guys, I can bust them up and knock them out.”
It kind of backfired on me. I sat in there with Fury and gave him the opportunity to lean on me and tire me out. I thought let me get out of this round, the fifth, and then I’ll get my second wind and be back on track. But that’s when he did what he did in round seven and got the KO win.
Since then, I’ve seen that knockdown video shared again and again on social media and a lot of the fans say, “Fury’s no good because a cruiserweight knocked him down.” That’s unfair.
But, remember, I wasn’t expected to do anything in that fight. The media were saying Fury was going to be too big and clean me out early. But then I shook up the world – for a second.
At that point, after our fight in 2013, I couldn’t imagine Fury beating Wladimir Klitschko and becoming heavyweight champion of the world. I thought he’d get the shot, because they were looking for a big guy, preferably unbeaten, to challenge Klitschko. But I never believed Fury would go to Germany and win like that.
That said, Fury got the win over me. He did what he had to do. And I’m not tooting my own horn but I’m a very skilful fighter and have a good boxing mind. There were things we were doing in camp to make certain things happen – including that big knockdown – and I didn’t think there were too many people who could do that. That’s probably why we haven’t seen Fury knocked down since.
He has improved over the years, no doubt. He has got better at fighting tall. He uses his height and reach better than he used to. He uses his jab and feet better than he used to. It’s good to see him back, also, and it’s interesting to see him fight another natural cruiserweight in Sefer Seferi.
For a cruiserweight fighting a heavyweight, timing rather than raw power will create knockouts and cause damage. Even though I was a cruiserweight, much smaller than him, I showed I carried pop in the Fury fight. Later, Fury goes and fights Wladimir and Wladimir does nothing to him. That makes me look great.
It also shows cruiserweights are dangerous.