By Allan Fox: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) will be defending his title in nine days from now against Tyson Fury (27-0, 19 KOs) on December 1 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Wilder-Fury is the headliner on Showtime PPV.
The undercard is stacked with a number of notable fighters such as Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Jarrett Hurd, Joe Joyce, Anthony Yarde, Alfredo Angulo, Chris Arreola and Robert ‘The Ghost’ Guerrero.
Wilder, 32, wants to make quick work of the mobile 6’9″ Fury, because he knows what kind of a problem the British fighter can be if you let him get in his groove. The faster Wilder gets to Fury’s chin the easier his job will be on December 1.
This fight is vitally important for Wilder, due to what’s at stake in terms of a big money fight in the future against Anthony Joshua. If Wilder wins, he keeps alive his chances of fighting Joshua. If he loses, then he can forget about fighting Joshua in the near future. Losing to Fury would mean that Wilder would need accept a much smaller purse split for the Joshua fight than the 50% that he’s currently asking for. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn has been offering Wilder from 12.5% to 15% of the revenue for the fight. That’s obviously very low for a unification fight, but that’s what Hearn feels Wilder is worth. He doesn’t seem him as worth as much as Joseph Parker, who he gave a 34% split.
“With this fight, it means everything to me,” Wilder said. “This is my time to shine. This is my coming-out party. Somewhere I was supposed to have been a long time ago due to different difficulties and different things up in the sport and in my life that made me not to have such things.”
This is Wilder’s biggest fight of his career. It’s the 6’7″ Deontay’s first pay-per-view fight of his 10-year pro career. If he blows it, he may never be involved in another pay-per-view fight in terms of stateside. Wilder can lose many times and still wind up on Sky Box Office PPV if he faces Joshua in the future. Wilder might even improve his chances of getting a fight against Joshua if he loses a number of times, since it’s not paid off for him simply to be an unbeaten champion. Joshua still hasn’t fought him. But as far as Wilder’s PPV status goes, he cannot lose the fight with Fury if he wants to be fighting in the United States on PPV. The boxing public isn’t going t want to pay to see a guy that can’t defeat someone like Fury, who isn’t well thought of by American boxing fans. They see him as a fighter who should have lost to Wladimir Klitschko in 2015 if the former world champion had more courage on the night. Wladimir gave Fury the win by not throwing punches, which made it.
“I’m ready. I’m feeling wonderful. My mindset, I feel like a killer,” Wilder said to fightnews.com.
Wilder wants to really knock Fury out and make a big statement in the process. Winning by a decision isn’t enough for Wilder. He wants to keep his knockout streak alive and break Floyd Mayweather’s 50-0 record, but do it in better style. Wilder wants to have 50 knockouts when he breaks Mayweather’s record, and it’s certainly achievable. Wilder is only 11 fights away from breaking Mayweather’s record, and he won’t be looking to do it the easy way by fighting UFC guys with no boxing experience like we saw with Floyd, who broke Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 record by fighting UFC fighter Conor McGregor.
“There is nothing at all that concerns me about him,” Wilder said about Fury. “He has a different style. He’s rangy, mobile and he believes he’s the best in the world. It’s an awkward style but my experience will help me,” Wilder on Fury “He said he can box and all that but once he gets in that ring everything goes out,”
The hardest thing that Wilder has to do is to figure out how to solve Fury’s awkward fighting style. That’s the rubik’s cube that Wilder will need to solve for him to win the fight on December 1. Fury is going to be trying to outsmart Wilder every step of the way, given that’s his only chance of winning. Fury does have a lot of knockouts on his record, but those came largely against domestic level fighters in the UK, and not against world class fighters. A knockout win for Fury is highly unlikely unless he can land enough slapping shots to knockout an exhausted Wilder. It’s not expected to be hot on December 1, so Fury can’t count on getting the type of knockout that Muhammad Ali scored over George Foreman in 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaire.
Wilder might be wrong about his opinion that Fury sees himself as the best heavyweight in the world. If Fury truly believed that he’s the best fighter in the world, he wouldn’t have added legendary trainer Freddie Roach to his team. That’s a move that a lot of boxing fans think was done out of desperation by the 30-year-old Fury. He’s worried. Fury deciding to come down to sea level from his training camp at Big Bear, California, suggests that he couldn’t handle the rigorous work that was required of him to fight at high altitude.
In terms of Fury’s power, Wilder has nothing to worry about whatsoever. Fury’s punches aren’t powerful enough for Wilder to have to worry a lot. What Wilder does have to worry about is being out-boxed by the 6’9″ Fury. Assuming that Fury has dropped enough weight for him to get his mobility back, Wilder might need to chase him around the ring for 12 rounds. Fury will be flicking jabs, throwing pot shots, and trying to impress the judges by making Wilder look like a clumsy and uncoordinated fighter. Depending on what kind of judges are assigned to the fight, Wilder could end up losing if the judges like the crafty way that Fury is fighting. That’s why it’s important that Wilder goes for the knockout as fast as possible on December 1, as the longer he leaves Fury around, the greater the chances that he can steal rounds with his spoiling style of fighting.