By Scott Gilfoid: Earlier today, former unified heavyweight champion Tyson Fury sent a warning message to WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder, saying that he’s totally focused on him for their World Boxing Council sanctioned rematch in 2019, and that the world knows who won their previous fight on December 1. Further, Fury (27-0-1, 19 KOs) says it’s going to take a “million judges” for Wilder to beat him in the rematch.
Just for the record, the judges scored the Wilder-Fury fight 115-111 for Wilder, 114-112 for Fury and 113-113. Boxing News 24 scored it for Wilder 114-112. Fury came close to winning, but he fell apart in the last four rounds of the fight. The 12 round split draw ruined Fury’s comeback dream. He was so close to a storybook comeback return, but he couldn’t stay on his feet down the home stretch. Wilder kept hitting Fury, and he kept going down. If this was a game of chess, Wilder was repeatedly taking Fury’s King, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. That right hand from Wilder nullified Fury’s talent in the home stretch of the fight.
Fury will have a chance to prove that he’s the better fighter in the rematch with the 6’7″ Wilder, but until then, he’s going to have to realize that he fell apart in the last quarter of their contest on the 1st of December, and he was lucky not to have been given a loss. Fury getting dropped twice isn’t how you go about beating the champ.
Fury said this about his warning to Wilder:
“Fury’s in the gym this morning, dreaming about Deontay Wilder. Sleeping, eating, and breathing Deontay Wilder. Don’t go to sleep on me. I’m going to bring in the New Year. You’re going to need more than a million judges to beat me next time, because the world knows the truth.”
The extra training that the 30-year-old Fury does to help him prepare for the Wilder second fight might not help him one bit. Fury’s failure to beat Wilder last week wasn’t due to a lack of training. It was because the 6’9″ didn’t possess the punch resistance or the talent to get the job done. Wilder knocked Fury down twice in the championship rounds to salvage the win. Moreover, in the first five rounds, Wilder appeared to win most of the rounds if not all of them. The judges gave Fury a break by giving him rounds where Wilder was landing the better shots. Fury easily could have lost the fight with Wilder.
In the meantime, it’s still not a certainty that Fury will get the rematch with Deontay in the first half of 2019. It seems that Fury has competition for Wilder’s services in early 2019. If Wilder can get his asking price of a 50-50 deal for the Joshua fight, then Fury is going to need to chill out and wait until the second half of 2019 before he can face Wilder again. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that Wilder will still be the unbeaten WBC heavyweight champion by then. He could lose to Joshua. In that case, Fury would need to decide whether it’s still worth it to fight Wilder a second time.
Logically, the smart move by Fury would be to face the winner of the Joshua vs. Wilder fight, because he would look silly facing the loser of the bout. Since many boxing fans expect Wilder to KO Joshua, it there’s a good chance Fury will still wind up facing Deontay. He’ll just need to wait a while longer. The good news for Fury is that he would have more time burning off that stubborn belly fat that he’s been unable to trim off his frame.
You’ve got to imagine that if Fury is given another six or seven months to train for the Wilder rematch, he should be in the best shape of his life for when he faces him again. As long as Fury doesn’t have a relapse of his personal problems and start eating himself out of house and home, he’ll be in great shape for the second fight against Deontay. It would be up to Fury though. Wilder can’t make Fury train and eat the right things. He’s got to want to do it himself.
Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn is counting on being able to setup a unification fight between his fighter Anthony Joshua and Wilder for April 13 on Sky Box Office at the giant Wembley Stadium in London, England. Hearn booked the huge 100,000 seat Wembley Stadium, and he badly needs a big name to help fill it. The boxing fans in the UK are showing lukewarm interest in seeing Joshua fight Hearn’s stable fighter Dillian Whyte again. They already saw Joshua knock the 250 lb fighter out three years ago. It’s a redundant fight. Had there been controversy over the results of the Joshua-Whyte fight or if it had been close in any way shape or form, then there would be some interest from boxing fans in seeing this tired retread fight. There wasn’t any controversy. Joshua beat Whyte with ease, and it was boring after the 2nd round due to how one-sided the fight was. Hearn is obviously hoping that the fans have forgotten how much of a mismatch it was so that they’ll want to see a second Joshua-Whyte fight. If Hearn can slip Whyte by the fans for a second Joshua fight, then what’s to stop him from trotting out other past AJ knockout victims like Eric Molina, Dominic Breazeale and Alexander Povetkin for needless rematches at Wembley Stadium.
“No, I think the wording was everything in that one, sanctioned not ordered.” Joshua’s promoter Hearn said to skysports.com about the World Boxing Council sanctioning but NOT ordering the Wilder vs. Fury 2 rematch. “I think what they’re saying is they would approve the rematch. If he wants to be undisputed, he’ll fight Joshua. It [unification] can trump anything,” Hearn said.
The unification fight between Joshua and Wilder is certainly a doable fight, and it can easily trump the Wilder-Fury 2 fight. But for that to happen, Hearn is going to need to show Wilder the money. That means Hearn is going to need to forget about the flat fee offers that he’s been giving Deontay, and start talking about giving Wilder what he wants to make the fight happen. Wilder has already named his asking price for the Joshua fight in saying that he wants 50% of the loot for the fight.
There’s nothing else that needs to be talked about. The question boils down to whether Hearn wants to give Wilder the money he’s asking for to fight Joshua. If not, then Hearn shouldn’t bother name dropping Wilder’s name. He should be focused on waiting for the smoke to clear from the December 22 rematch between Whyte and journeyman Dereck Chisora from their fight on Sky Box Office PPV at the O2 Arena in London, England. Hearn wants to sell the Joshua vs. Whyte 2 rematch to the British public. If that’s what Hearn wants, he can do it, but if he’s not going to negotiate the Joshua-Wilder fight by meeting Deontay’s asking price, it’s hard to see the fight taking place.
Hearn is hoping that he can get Wilder to agree to a much lower figure than what he’s been asking for. Hearn even mentioned an 80-20 split in favor of Joshua recently for the Wilder fight. That shows how far apart Hearn and Wilder is. When you have a promoter that believes that you’re not even worth getting what a mandatory challenger would be receiving for a fight against Joshua, then there’s no point in continuing to discuss anything.
Hearn wants Joshua to get the lion’s share of the money, and that’s not what Wilder is about to agree to. If Wilder was willing to agree to the 85-15 or 80-20 split that Hearn has talked about, then that fight could have been made ages ago, and there would have been no need for Joshua to fight 39-year-old Alexander Povetkin last September. Wilder did agree to the $15 million flat fee for the Joshua fight last September, but Hearn instead matched him against Povetkin