By Scott Gilfoid: Former heavyweight title challenger Tony Thompson (38-4, 26 KO’s) is saying that he’s interested in fighting undefeated contender Deontay Wilder (29-0, 29 KO’s), but he’s unable to the match because Deontay’s manager supposedly isn’t agreeable to a Thompson-Wilder fight for some reason.
Thompson said “Wilder may be saying ‘yes,’ but his manager is saying, ‘Hell no!’ Tyson Fury, Alexander Povetkin, Tomasz Adamek, it don’t matter. I’m here.”
This is interesting because Deontay has said many times in the past that he’d love to fight the 6’5″ Thompson, but he would never agree to it. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer also said in the past that he was interested in matching Deontay vs. Thompson. However, Thompson himself said after his first win over David Price that he wasn’t looking for a fight against Deontay. Instead, Thompson wanted to get another world title shot against one of the Klitschko brothers. But it looks like Kubrat Pulev messed up Thompson’s plans by beating him last August by a 12 round unanimous decision.
Deontay would have too much power and speed for Thompson. Deontay would go right after him in the first round looking to take his head off. Deontay knows that Thompson is vulnerable in the early going, and that’s why he’d looking to blast him out quickly.
Deontay has an important fight coming up this Saturday night against Nicolai Firtha (21-10-1, 8 KO’s) at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA. There’s nothing being said about who Deontay will be facing after the Firtha fight, but I think a fight between Deontay and Thompson would be a good match-up to get Deontay ready to face one of the Klitschko brothers. Deontay would be going from a fight against the 6’6″ Firtha to one against the 6’5″ Thompson and finally the creme de la creme against Wladimir Klitschko or his brother Vitali. A fight between Deontay and Thompson would be the perfect setup fight for Deontay to get him ready for the size of the 6’6″ Wladimir or the 6’7″ Vitali.
Thompson impressed a lot of boxing fans this year with his back to back stoppage victories over the giant 6’8″ David Price. Thompson showed good power, excellent ring smarts and superb ring smarts in winning those two fights against Price. It’s just too bad that Thompson failed to come up with a good strategy to beat Pulev because if he’d have beaten him last August, Thompson would be looking at getting third shot against Wladimir.
The problem that Thompson had against Pulev was that he didn’t have the power to hurt him or the stamina to open up on him to tire him out the way that he’d done against Price in their second fight. I blame Thompson for not coming into condition for the Pulev fight because he looked like he hadn’t trained hard enough for the fight for some reason. I’m not sure if Thompson celebrated after the second fight or what, but he looked fat and not ready to fight for the full 12 rounds, which is what he would have needed to do in order to beat the 6’4 1/2″ Pulev.
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