By Tim Roymer: The early projections for pay-per-view buys on SHOWTIME Boxing for last Saturday’s Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury card is on course for 300,000 buys, according to Mike Coppinger of RingTV.com. This doesn’t count the PPV buys from the UK. The numbers are better than expected, making the Wilder-Fury broadcast one of the best for a fight involving big for a long time.
The break even point for the card is said to be 250,000 buys. Everything above that will help Wilder and Fury’s bottom line to make more revenue from the fight. Wilder received a guaranteed $4 million and Fury $3 million.
The PPV numbers, if they hold on course for 300,000+ for the Wilder-Fury fight, could hurt Wilder’s chances of getting the huge purse split that he wanted for a fight against Anthony Joshua. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn has already said that if the Wilder-Fury fight brings in less than 400,000 buys, he’ll only offer Deontay a 70-30 purse split for a fight against Joshua. That’s a split that is a million miles away from the 50-50 split that Wilder has been asking for in a fight against Joshua. 70-30 isn’t even as good as the 67-33 split Joshua Parker received for his fight with Joshua last March.
“If it does under 400,000, he might get 70-30,” Hearn said about the purse split that he’ll give Wilder for a fight against Anthony Joshua if his fight with Fury brings in LESS than 400,000 PPV buys. “No one knows who Deontay Wilder is. If it does over 500 thousand, we’ll give him 60-40.”
It doesn’t sound like Hearn is going to be able to put together a fight between Joshua and Wilder anytime soon unless one of them loses. A loss for Wilder in the rematch with Fury would obviously bring his asking price down for the Joshua fight. Likewise, if Joshua loses to his April 13 fight, which is likely to be against Dillian Whyte or Oleksander Usyk, then Hearn will have a difficult time trying to get Wilder to agree to a 70-30 split for a fight against AJ. Wilder was always going to be in a tough position to get boxing fans excited about him fighting Fury, as he was facing a guy that had been out of action for the most part for the last three years. When Fury did return recently, he took two soft fights against little known Sefer Seferi and Francesco Pianeta before signing with Wilder for a fight on SHOWTIME PPV. It was too soon for Wilder to be fighting Fury on PPV.
Wilder vs. Fury resulted in a 12 round split draw on SHOWTIME PPV last Saturday night on December 1 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The judges scored it 115-111 for Wilder, 114-112 for Fury and 113-113. Many boxing fans, former fighters and trainers saw Fury winning. Fury being knocked down in the 9th and 12th rounds by Wilder undermined the argument that he deserved the win. In boxing, it’s not common for fighters to win after they’ve been knocked down twice.
In Fury’s case, he had a lot of boxing fans, former fighters and managers pulling for him to win due to everything he’s had to go through in coming back from a long 2 1/2 year layoff, mental health and alcohol related problems. It would have made a great comeback story for Fury to return after everything he’s been through and beat Wilder. The judges didn’t take that into account obviously. They were focused on more on judging the fight from an athletic angle, and Fury getting knocked down and out-punched by Wilder made it impossible for them to give him the win.
Fury was very lucky the fight wasn’t stopped in the 12th round when he knocked down by Wilder. Fury’s eyes were closed for several seconds while he was down on the canvas, and he wasn’t stirring. The referee Jack Reiss stood over the motionless Fury and he eventually woke up. It was a miracle for Fury that the referee didn’t stop it.