Ben Davison, the head trainer for heavyweight Tyson Fury, believes his fighter may have overtrained for last Saturday's fight against Otto Wallin at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Fury won a twelve round unanimous decision, but sustained two severe cuts in the bout and he was also buzzed in the twelfth and final round.
Fury is now in line for a rematch with WBC world champion Deontay Wilder in February 2020 - if Wilder wins his own rematch with Luis Ortiz, which is scheduled for a date in November.
Fury's father, John Fury, lashed out at Davison in the aftermath of the Wallin bout. He called for everyone to be fired - after what he felt was a poor performance by his son.
But Davison admits that his boxer make have steered from the training plan at times.
"Potentially [he over-trained], because even when he’s not with me he’s constantly training. So I have tried to encourage him to have a little bit of a rest, but it’s hard to do as well because for his mental state he trains so even when I’m giving him advice to have a bit of time off it affects him mentally. So we do have to take a look at that and find the balance for sure," Davison told Boxing Social.
"He came in slightly lighter than anticipated, but what I will say is, by the time he got in the ring he would have been a lot heavier than what he weighed on the scales, that’s for sure. I’m always looking at areas we can improve and there were a couple of things in the last couple of days that I wasn’t too happy with in terms of the final stages of preparation, just straying off the nutrition plan a little bit.
"When you eat foreign foods that your body has not eaten for four, five, six weeks it doesn’t sit well with the gut. There was a couple of changes, he strayed off the plan a couple of times after he’d weighed in, even just before he’d weighed in as well. I do feel like – well I know, whatever he may say – that he wasn’t feeling himself 100%. But it’s all part of it, it’s all part of learning, all lessons for the future."