Who got Fury stripped?

By Boxing News - 12/09/2015 - Comments

fury12345By Robert “Big Moe” Elmore: Only after 11 days of being IBF champion, the IBF has stripped Tyson Fury of his belt for refusing to fight mandatory challenger Vyacheslav Glaskov. Let’s deal with Wladimir Klitcshko first. He was the A side, dictated the terms, and one of those terms was a rematch clause.

Fury, who was probably just excited to be getting the fight, accepted the terms. I can’t blame him. It was a huge pay day against a huge opponent. The IBF released a statement saying the contracts submitted for the fight never contained a rematch clause and was not aware of such clause until after the fight.

I beg to differ here. The IBF could have taken extra steps to get more information about this fight if they really wanted to. You see how fast they moved to strip Fury? Nonsense. Once word came down from Main Events promoter Kathy Duva that she was withdrawing from negotiations for a bout with Deontay Wilder and was willing to wait and see what the IBF was going to do concerning Fury, the wheels of stripping moved swiftly.

Fury was the mandatory to the WBO and WBA, not the IBF. So why were they sanctioning the bout to begin with? Here’s why. Wladimir was guaranteed at least $18 million plus $5 million from personal sponsorship and he’s pulling in 23 million. Fury was guaranteed $5.5 million. 3 percent for sanctioning fees from either fighter is a lot of money. Then there the other question. How long has Glaskov been the mandatory challenger? Was he the mandatory prior to Fury getting his shots? If Glaskov was, then why was there no move to strip Wladimir?

Now we’ll deal with Main Events promoter Kathy Duva. Duva is doing what she should do; get her fighter a shot at the title. I can’t blame her there. Consequently, she will have to deal Haymon anyhow as he handles Charles Martin’s career and the bout has been ordered to go into a purse bid. I don’t think she has enough cash to compete with Haymon at this time so she might be on the losing end of this battle. Her only hope is if Glaskov defeats Martin.

Fury doesn’t seem to care if he was stripped or not the fight was bigger than one belt. Fury probably could have worked out a deal with Glaskov to step aside and let the Wladimir rematch happen, and then the two would fight. This probably meant he was going to have to fork over a nice size chunk of money only for Glaskov to turn around and get more money for their fight. It probably wasn’t worth it.

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I also believe the object is not let one fighter get their hands on all the belts again and darken the division like Wladimir did. At least not now. There is a movement to spotlight other up and coming heavyweights. Once, there is a cluster of them jockeying for position, then unification might happen. However, I do see this possibility happening. Should Martin be victorious, look for him to make a couple defenses and then take on Wilder. But I believe that Duva and the IBF had more to do with Fury getting stripped than he did.



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