Fury and Whyte will both be relying on Kronk's KO recipe at Wembley
Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte will both be relying on Kronk’s knockout recipe to steer them to glory at Wembley, with coaches SugarHill Steward and Harold Knight two pupils of the iconic Detroit gym… this heavyweight bout has all the ingredients for a war
- Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte are set to collide at Wembley on Saturday night
- Both British heavyweights have been taught straight from the Kronk playbook
- Fury is trained by SugarHill Steward, nephew of Kronk Godfather Manny Steward
- Whyte’s coach is Harold Knight, another of Manny’s proteges at the Detroit gym
Those in the nosebleed blocks of Wembley Stadium might have to squint. But look closely enough and the biggest crowd in British boxing history will notice something curious tonight: as Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte collide in centre ring, both corners – red and blue – will be doused in gold.
It is a remarkable tale of Sugar and Shadow and sweat that began in a sweltering basement in Detroit. In more recent years, both Fury and Whyte have been entwined with the Kronk beyond the Midwest: from Las Vegas to Morecambe, Portugal and Gibraltar.
Now Saturday night, those common threads tangle at Wembley and that small gym has mitts all over this battle of Britain.
Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte are set to collide at Wembley Stadium on Saturday night
Fury is trained by SugarHill Steward – the nephew of Kronk Godfather Manny Steward – and Andy Lee, his second cousin and a former Kronk fighter. Whyte, meanwhile, now counts among his cornermen Harold ‘Shadow’ Knight, another protege of Steward who trained Lennox Lewis.
Though neither heavyweight might carry the gym’s iconic colours, both are taught from the Kronk playbook.
‘It’s not a style, it’s a mentality,’ Lee recently explained. ‘It’s about getting the knockout.’ Or, as SugarHill puts it: ‘You have two fists, let them be the judges.’
The younger Steward still remembers that Tuesday morning – 7.37am, to be precise – when Fury rekindled an old love-affair. They had first met in 2009 when the heavyweight, then 21, hopped on a plane to Detroit. ‘Who are you?’ SugarHill asked him. ‘The next heavyweight champion of the world,’ Fury replied.
Both men have connections to the famous Kronk gym, with Fury trained by Manny Steward’s nephew SugarHill
Whyte’s coach, Harold ‘Shadow’ Knight, is also one of the legendary Detroit gym’s pupils
By then, the Kronk conveyor belt was ‘churning out champions like the automotive industry was churning out cars,’ as SugarHill says. Fury spent a few weeks living and training in Detroit; he was invited to join Wladimir Klitschko’s alpine camp, too.
Shortly before his death in 2012, Steward tipped Fury to become the next dominant heavyweight. A decade on, his nephew has helped fulfil that prophecy.
‘It was very fitting that I ended up back with the Kronk Gym,’ Fury has said. He went back to the future following his first fight with Deontay Wilder in 2018, when his elusive backfoot boxing earned little reward on the scorecards.
‘Tyson had discussed with me that he got a draw the first time and he wants to make sure he beats him, and I said, ‘Well s***, the only way for sure way… is to get a knockout,’ SugarHill previously recalled. So he did. Twice.
Whyte turned to Knight in much darker times. His world title ambitions lay in tatters following a savage knockout by Alexander Povetkin in 2020. So ‘Shadow’ was hired to work alongside trainer Xavier Miller and the Kronk philosophy has dripped into Whyte’s routine thereafter.
Fury reunited with SugarHill in 2020 almost a decade since the pair first crossed paths
Whyte chose to link up with Knight after his 2020 knockout defeat against Alexander Povetkin
‘When I get in situations with Dillian now, I always revert back to: “What would Emanuel Steward do?”’ said Knight, whose Kronk connection began as a teenager. ‘I know he will be looking down on this fight, telling me and Sugar, that now it is the time for us to show him how it’s done,’ he told Boxing 24/7 this week.
Neither Knight nor SugarHill can perhaps re-create the stifling conditions of that basement where, in the words of one former fighter, ‘the walls used to sweat.’ That gym, where legends such as Tommy Hearns were made, burned down a few years ago. But the lessons live on.
Take sparring. Kronk wars were a legendary tenet of that fight factory as Whyte is now learning – the hard way. ‘Before, Dillian was bringing in guys he was content with,’ Knight claimed. ‘Now we brought in guys that challenged him, that help him take his speed to another level.’
There is science behind the simplicity of Kronk’s knockout mentality, too. Ties that bind big punchers from every era: solid fundamentals and a few subtle secrets. ‘People say that you can’t really teach punching power but obviously that’s incorrect,’ says SugarHill. Both he and Knight, for example, have worked on their fighter’s balance.
Both Whyte and Fury will hope Kronk’s knockout recipe can steer them to glory at Wembley
This will not be the first time these ‘good friends’ have sat in opposite corners; Kronk has followed Fury throughout his career, too. He wore old boots, given to him by Manny Steward, when he dethroned the trainer’s former charge, Wladimir Klitschko. Then, for their trilogy fight, Wilder was trained by Malik Scott, who used to spar Lewis at Kronk while Knight and SugarHill honed their trade.
‘Everything is just Kronk because that’s the way I was raised… in that hot, sweaty gym in the basement,’ SugarHill said. No wonder Fury-Whyte has all the ingredients for another one of those wars.
‘Everybody wants to get a knockout,’ he added. ‘It makes you feel good to hit someone off the knuckles, they feel down and maybe don’t get up.’
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