By Scott Gilfoid: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder is predicting a victory tonight for Tyson Fury over his hand-picked opponent Francesco Pianeta in his second fight of his comeback at Windsor Park in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Wilder will be at ringside tonight to watch the Fury-Pianeta fight, and then start hyping their fight later this year in November in Las Vegas, Nevada. As for IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua, Wilder says he’s no longer relevant. The main focus is the Wilder-Fury fight coming up.
“Fury’s going to win, then I’m going to knock him out,” Wilder said to skysports.com. “Joshua’s old news, the new kid in town is Fury. Ours is the biggest fight.”
Joshua, 28, hasn’t helped him stay relevant in the boxing news front by choosing to fight an old timer in 38-year-old Alexander Povetkin instead of Deontay, who the fans were hoping he would fight. Joshua and his promoter Eddie Hearn maintain that they had to take the fight against Povetkin because he’s Joshua’s WBA mandatory and the World Boxing Association would have stripped him of his title if he didn’t take it. However, few fans believe that. They feel that as popular as Joshua is, the WBA wouldn’t have stripped him in a million years if he had told them to back off and let him take the far bigger fight against Wilder. Hearn still stays that Joshua will be looking to fight the winner of the Fury vs. Wilder fight on April 13 at Wembly Stadium in London, England. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen because Hearn is only offering Wilder a $15 million flat fee. It’s unclear whether Hearn will do the same thing with Fury if he topples Wilder in November. Will Hearn offer Fury a flat fee as well? If so, then Joshua is never going to fight Fury or Wilder, because neither of them are going to ever agree to a flat fee offer unless it’s something astronomically high like $50 million.
Wilder showed up at Fury’s weigh-in last Friday for his fight against Francesco Pianeta. Almost immediately, Wilder got into a brief altercation with Fury’s dad, John Fury, and the two had to be kept from one another. Wilder seemed pretty calm, but John seemed to be ready to boil over on the spot. It’s a good thing that the hefty John didn’t get to Wilder because it might have ended badly.
You have to feel a little sorry for the 33-year-old Pianeta, as he’s been nearly completely forgotten due to the high amount of interest there is in the Wilder-Fury fight. The same goes for the main event tonight between interim World Boxing Organization featherweight champion Carl Frampton and Luke Jackson. There’s no interest in that fight whatsoever. That’s basically the walkout fight on the card. It won’t be surprising to see boxing fans leaving early while the Frampton-Jackson fight is still going on. The real interest from fans is seeing Fury dispatch Pianeta, and more importantly the interaction afterwards between Fury and Wilder inside the ring.
After the Joshua-Wilder negotiations fell apart, Wilder turned his sights to Fury, who was admittedly embarrassed at how Joshua had made his country look bad by not accepting the challenge to fight Wilder. Fury thinks Joshua made the UK look bad by not taking the fight with Wilder. At the root of it all, Fury believes Joshua lacked the courage to step inside the ring to fight the 6’7” American Wilder. As such, Fury wasn’t going to let Wilder walk away without him stepping up and showing Joshua how it’s done by agreeing to fight Wilder. Regardless of how things end for Fury against Wilder, he’ll have the fans’ respect in the UK for showing bravery to face arguably the most powerful and talented heavyweights in the division today. Fury wasn’t going to stand behind his promoter and have him help him swerve the fight by giving a lowball flat fee offer. Fury actually wants the fight, and he’s shown that.
Fury vs. Wilder has a tentative date of November 17 in Las Vegas for their mega-fight. All the 29-year-old Fury needs to do is make sure he comes out of tonight’s fight against Pianeta with the ‘W’ and in one piece. Fury’s promoter Frank Warren can then finish putting together the Wilder fight so that the two giants can face each other in three months from now on the 17th of November. The boxing fans worldwide will be in for a huge treat when Fury and Wilder go at it.
Last June, Fury returned from the ring after a nearly three year layoff to defeat Sefer Seferi by a 4th round knockout in Manchester. It was a good performance for Fury given how much time he’d been out of the ring and the fact that he was weighing 276 pounds for the fight. That’s 30 pounds heavier than what Fury weighed for his last fight before that against former IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko in November 2015 in Dusseldorf Germany. The extra weight that Fury was carrying around for the Seferi fight slowed him down to a large degree, but not enough for him to land some monstrous right hands and left hooks. The 5’9” Seferi finally gave up after four rounds of being batted around the ring by the 6’9” Fury. Seferi could have continued to fighting, but it was pointless for him to continue on. If he’d stuck it out a little bit longer, he would have wound up getting pummeled and possibly hurt by Fury.
Fury hopes that tonight’s fight against the 6’5” Pianeta will help set him up for a bigger contest against Wilder in June. That’s where the real interest lies for Fury. He’ll be involved in the biggest fight in the heavyweight division in November against Deontay if everything goes right tonight.
Frampton weighed 126 pounds last Friday at the weigh-in for his fight against Jackson. For his part, Jackson weighed 124 pounds 12oz. Frampton is a big favorite to defeat Jackson tonight. Frampton can’t afford to lose to Jackson, because he says he wants to fight WBO featherweight champion Oscar Valdez and IBF champion Josh Warrington for their titles. The Valdez fight figures to be a very tough one for Frampton, because the Mexican fighter is coming off of a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision win over Scott Quigg and he’s looking unbeatable right now.