That’s all for tonight. You can read a full report of the main event here. Thanks as always for following along with us.
“The key was to enjoy myself,” Fury says. “I used the jab. I was slipping with my hands down and sliding shifted to southpaw and caught him with a straight left. It was a good shot it would have put anybody away.”
He adds: “I came here to put on a show for Las Vegas and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.”
When pressed on his future plans, Fury says he will fight once more this year on 21 September or 5 October ... “and then next year we’re going to hunt down Deontay Wilder and make him give me that green belt!”
Tyson Fury wins by second-round TKO!
Fury connects with a cracking uppercut out of a southpaw stance that ignites the crowd. Schwarz opens up and lands a few shots, cornering Fury briefly only for the big man to escape and fire back a combination. Schwarz backs up Fury along the ropes once more and unloads, but Fury dodges nearly every punch of it was stylish upper body movement. Now it’s Fury opening up and down goes Schwarz under a hail of punches. He makes it to his feet, but Fury comes in for the finish. One after another he connects with power shots until Kenny Bayless puts a stop to it with six seconds left in the round.
The Gypsy King @Tyson_Fury finishes it with a second-round flurry 😤 pic.twitter.com/r0SPMYkdJv
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) June 16, 2019
Updated
Round 1
Fury spends the opening round almost exclusively shooting jabs at Schwarz as the German walks forward and tries to cut off the ring. Fury is scoring well with the punch, touching Schwarz at will, and now he’s starting to put the right hand behind it. He relaxed and moving around the ring nicely. An easy round for him.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Fury 10-9 Schwarz (Fury 10-9 Schwarz)
The fighters have been announced. They’ve met at the center of the ring for the final instructions from referee Kenny Bayless. The seconds are out. And we’ll pick it up with round-by-round coverage from here.
Here we go! We’ve just sat through the national anthems for Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Now the lights have gone down and the fighters are making their entrances. First it’s Schwarz, who emerges to Bob Marley’s One Love wearing a black robe with gold trim. So serious. Then comes Fury in an all-black robe, making the slow approach in the tunnel to Gala’s Freed From Desire ... then he tears it off as he walked into the arena to reveal a Uncle Sam outfit. He’s recreating Apollo Creed’s star-spangled ringwalk from Rocky IV. He does know how that all ended, right?
Tonight’s attendance is 9,102, or about half the arena’s capacity. The upper bowl has been curtained off, so it doesn’t feel empty.
Jesse Hart has won a unanimous decision over Sullivan Barrera by scores of 99-90, 96-93 and 97-92. The North Philadelphia native, a former world title challenger at super middleweight, dropped Barrera in the eighth and coasted home for the decision in his light heavyweight debut.
“I don’t take nothing away from Sullivan Barrera, but I hurt my hand in the seventh round,” Hart says. “I had one hand. My right hand was completely shot. After I hurt him and dropped him, I couldn’t really finish him. That’s why you saw the left hook come. As you can see, I can punch with both hands. I take my hat off to him. He came to fight.”
He adds: “I think I’m a force to be reckoned with. If I had both my hands, I believe it would’ve went differently.”
Next up: Tyson Fury v Tom Schwarz.
Updated
We’ve got a spicy one cooking between Jesse Hart and Sullivan Barrera. We’re halfway through the scheduled 10-round light heavyweight affair, the last of the undercard bouts ahead of tonight’s main event, and both guys have been in trouble at different points.
Mikaela Mayer has just won a 10-round unanimous decision over Lizbeth Crespo by scores of 98-92, 99-91 and 100-90. The US Olympian was in total command from the third round on, improving her record to 11 wins in as many pro fights.
“I am ready for a world title fight next,” Mayer said. “It’s time for the champions to step up and get in the ring with me.”
She adds: “Crespo was a tough challenge, but I got through it and am ready to move on to bigger things.”
In case you missed it ... Josh Warrington defended his IBF featherweight title for a second time with a split-decision win over Kid Galahad in Leeds a few hours ago.
Upset alert! We’ve just had an surprise on the undercard as Albert Bell handed super featherweight contender Andy Vences his first professional defeat in an entertaining 10-round super featherweight scrap. Bell (15-0, 5 KOs) outthrew and outlanded his opponent from start to finish, winning by 97-93 on all three judges’ scorecards.
“I worked so hard for this,” Bell said afterward. “In my first 10-rounder, I went out there and put my undefeated record on the line against a top guy. You don’t see that too much anymore. I’ve been counted out and this shows that I’m a fighter to be taken seriously at 130 pounds.”
Said a disappointed Vences (22-1-1, 12 KOs): “I fought someone who didn’t want to fight. I was looking for the action the whole fight, pressuring him. I thought that I hurt him and connected on the bigger punches. This is the hurt business.”
Earlier, Fury’s friend and teammate Isaac Lowe bolstered his credentials as a featherweight prospect with unanimous-decision win over Duarn Vue.
Mikaela Mayer, who represented the US at the Rio Olympics, is in the ring now for a 10-round super featherweight bout against Lizbeth Crespo. One more 10-rounder between light heavyweights Jesse Hart and Sullivan Barrera will follow, then Fury and Schwarz will make their ringwalks.
Hello and welcome to the MGM Grand Garden Arena for tonight’s heavyweight clash between Tyson Fury and Tom Schwarz. When last we saw the Gypsy King, he’d just spent most of a December evening boxing the ears off Deontay Wilder, frustrating the WBC heavyweight champion with an effective jab and deft movement, even surviving a ninth-round knockdown to roar back in the final reel. He was dropped a second time by a violent combination in the last round, seemingly unconscious on descent, before somehow making it to his feet and settling for a split draw. Although Fury failed in his bid to regain the world heavyweight championship he’d won from Wladimir Klitschko but never lost in the ring, the career-best performance sent his stock through the roof. Indeed, Fury signed a money-spinning contract with Top Rank and ESPN on the heels of it.
That partnership begins tonight with what can only be accurately described as a marking-time fight. Schwarz, a German who is somehow ranked No 2 by the World Boxing Organization despite being unknown to all but the most hardcore observers until the match was announced in April, looks the part at a strapping 6ft 5in, undefeated in 24 fights including 16 victories inside the distance. But the ledger is, shall we say, light on recognizable names and includes only one 10-rounder, a unanimous decision over the ordinary Dennis Lewandowski three years ago. He was a 12-1 longshot at the MGM Grand sports book when I arrived on Thursday and the number has drifted to 15-1 in the days since.
In short, Fury is expected to win and look good doing it.
Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s his lookahead to tonight’s main event.
