By Scott Gilfoid: Tyson Fury says he’s heard the rumors of him supposedly pulling out of his still unsigned fight with WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder for November, and he says it’s absolutely NOT TRUE. Fury (27-0, 19 KOs) states that he’s still going to be facing the 6’7” Wilder in Las Vegas, Nevada this year.
Last Friday, ESPN writer Dan Rafael shook up the boxing world when he said that he had heard from sources in Fury’s camp that he’s “balking” at taking the fight. There was no reason why Fury would be pulling out. Obviously, taking on arguably the most talented heavyweight in the division in Deontay would be reason enough for the 29-year-old Fury to want to pull out if he needed a concrete reason not to take the fight. Fury has only had two fights against lower level opposition in Sefer Serferi and Francesco Pianeta since emerging from a 2 ½ year layoff from the sport, and looked something awful in both fights. Fury looked so bad against Pianeta that he even had heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn remarking about how slow and weak he had looked.
Fury said this on his social media about his status for the fight against unbeaten Deontay (40-0, 39 KOs):
”I’ve been reading and I heard some rumors that the fight is off between me and Wilder. NOT on my watch it ain’t. I’m not pulling out of nothing. It’s on like Donkey Kong. Tyson Fury is like a king coming to America.”
What’s more than a little worrisome is the Wilder vs. Fury fight was rumored to be 99% done 2 weeks ago, and yet here it is still unsigned. That’s not good that the fight still isn’t done yet. It’s now less than three months before mid-November. Mega-fights are usually signed by three months before the fight. The fact that the Fury vs. Wilder fight STILL isn’t inked is unsettling, and it could be a harbinger for bad news to come.
Fury has failed to take fights in the past against Dereck Chisora, Wladimir Klitschko [rematch], Tony Bellew and David Haye when he was going to fight those guys, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he chose not to fight Wilder. We’ll have to wait and see what Fury chooses to do. I mean, you never know what the guy is going to do until the fight is signed and he’s marching into the ring. If I’m Wilder, I’d have a good backup plan in case Fury gets cold feet or if he comes up lame during training with a hangnail.