Arslanbek Makhmudov’s trainer, Marc Ramsay, has told Boxing Social that if he had been told last year that his heavyweight would be challenging Tyson Fury, he wouldn’t “have believed you.”
Makhmudov (21-2, 19 KOs) faces Tyson Fury 16 months on from the former world champion’s retirement. Meanwhile, Makhmudov rebounded from stoppage losses to Agit Kabayel and Guido Vianello in quick succession with victories over Ricardo Brown and David Allen.
“It’s going to be a great experience in front of all those people in a football stadium with the reputation of Tyson Fury and the quality of Tyson Fury,” Ramsay said exclusively to Boxing Social. “He looks like he is very motivated to prove a point. He looks in shape and I think it’s going to be an amazing fight. On the outside we have nothing to lose. If you told us a year ago that we were going to fight Tyson Fury, we would have never believed you. Now we have that opportunity and we will go there very motivated. We have nothing to lose, no pressure and we are going to go for the home run.”
“It’s a great opportunity for him. From the point where we beat David Allen in England, it has become good publicity for Tyson Fury to recuperate his career. But for us, it is a win-win situation. We have nothing to lose, everything to gain going into that fight. It’s like being at war and throwing your last grenade. We have everything to win in that bout.”
Ahead of the 36-year-old’s defeat to Kabayel, Makhmudov had knocked out 17 of his 18 opponents. The Russian was considered the favorite by many heading into the fight. A disappointing 4th-round stoppage defeat followed as Guido Vianello handed him his second knockout loss inside three fights.
“The major thing, and I had this before with David Lemieux, who was knocking out everybody, it can be hard to teach people like that,” Ramsay explained. “You try to teach them every day that ‘we are going to fight somebody one day who will take you ten or 12 rounds.’ You need to be somebody who can deal with all aspects of boxing, not just the first four or six rounds. You need to be able to lose a round and come back in the fight. You try bringing in guys [for sparring] who can bring that experience, but it’s not always the case. Obviously when you possess that type of power, you can close the show very fast. When they have that first loss, I had the same situation with Lemieux, that is the right time to sit down and listen! If you don’t change now, it’s going to come back [to haunt you].
“Power can never be the first aspect of a boxer. Power is something we have on our side, it’s a good tool, but this is not the main stuff. You need to know how to box tired in the second part of the fight with good technique and a good jab to control the action. This is the art of boxing.”
Makhmudov recently said in a media huddle that he changed his tactics after he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to “knock out” Allen, instead outboxing the Englishman to an away-day unanimous decision victory in Sheffield last October.
“It was a good fight,” Ramsay added. “To be honest it was the perfect opponent for us, someone durable like Allen. To also teach Arslanbek that kind of pattern, and make sure he controls the action. Of course we are going to try and knock out everybody, but there are some guys over there who are very, very tough. For the first time in his life he won very clean and properly.”