By Mike Smith: The World Boxing Council spokesperson will consider rematch requests for a second fight between WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury, but they will not question the results from last Saturday’s fight between the two fighters, according to Talksport. The WBC sees the results of the Wilder-Fury fight as a fair one in a fight that was very close at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.
It’s going to look bad if the WBC orders a rematch between Wilder and Fury, given that it was a voluntary defense by Deontay. You don’t see that kind of thing too often. The WBC must like the idea of letting Wilder and Fury fight a rematch. If they didn’t, they would order Wilder to face his mandatory Dominic Breazeale right away. That fight isn’t nearly as interesting to the boxing world as a rematch between Wilder and Fury.
You can argue that it’s pointless to appeal the results of the Wilder vs. Fury fight hoping to get the results of the fight overturned. That’s useless. Fury got knocked down twice, and was essentially knocked out in the 12th by Wilder. If not for the actions of a referee that bent over backwards to give Fury every chance in the world to get back up, the fight would have been stopped on the spot.
“The ring officials, who worked the Wilder vs Fury bout are three people who are highly honorable and upright,” said the spokesperson to talksport.com. “Our organisation will not accept any kind of questioning whatsoever in relation to our officials. The bout was very close and there were two knockdowns.”
The good news is the World Boxing Council are leaning in the direction of not standing in the way of a rematch between Wilder and Fury. It doesn’t appear that the WBC will order Wilder to fulfill his mandatory defense against challenger Dominic Breazeale, who has been waiting for his title shot against Wilder for over a year now. The WBC wants to let the bigger fight between Fury and Wilder take place first before they look to order the winner to face the 6’7″ Breazeale.
Wilder is still surprised that Fury made it back to his feet in the 12th round after he planted him on the canvas with a beautiful combination to the head.
“God lifted that man up from that knockout,” Deontay said to TMZ Sports. “So now when we have the rematch, it’s nothing that’s going to be said.”
Fury had his moments in the first eight rounds of the fight at the Staples Center last Saturday night in Los Angeles. Wilder couldn’t connect with his right hands, and he wasn’t doing a good job of adapting to Fury’s defensive moves. A good heavyweight would come back with additional shots in close after they would miss with a long right hand, but Wilder wasn’t doing that. He was either tying Fury up or letting himself be tied up after a big swing.
Wilder looked clumsy and one-paced much of the time. But in the 9th round, Wilder showed a sense of urgency that was missing in the first part of the fight, and that changed the outlook of the fight. No longer was Wilder looking clueless and utterly confused. He suddenly looked like the hunter, and he hunting for big game. Fury seemed to sense it, as he started moving even more in the last quarter of the fight than he had been. It was no use though. Wilder was finding Fury more and more with his big fight hands, and getting the better of him.
When Wilder finally did connect with two big shots that knocked Fury on his back in the 12th, it was thought that the fight was over at that point. Fury’s eyes were closed, and he looked like he was unconscious. The only thing that was missing was the referee stopping the fight and calling for the medical staff to come into the ring. But for some reason the referee Jack Reiss waited until Fury opened his eyes. It was a good thing that Fury had Reiss working the fight because the fight would have been waived off if almost any other referee had worked the contest. Reiss took a huge risk by waiting until Fury came to, as if this had the Adonis Stevenson vs. Oleksander Gvozdyk fight last Saturday, he would have faced huge criticism by standing over Adonis and waiting for 10 seconds while he was hurt on the canvas.
“The last knockdown was a devastating one, where the eyes rolled in the back of the head,” Deontay said. “9 times out of 10, a referee would have stopped that immediately.”
It’s likely more than 9 times out of 10 that a referee would have stopped a fight in which a fighter was knocked down like Fury was in the 12th. It could be as high as 99 out of 100 fights a referee would stop the fight when he sees a fighter get knocked down and his eyes are shut while he’s down for several seconds. Referees aren’t going to put themselves at risk by letting a fighter lay there in that condition without halting the fight.
“I think he had an army of prayers around him that night, and I think God don’t make mistakes, though. I think God woke that guy up for the rematch,” Wilder said.
It’s questionable whether Fury is going to be the same guy in the rematch with Wilder. A knockdown like that isn’t one that you want to ignore. For Fury’s sake, he should make sure he gets a good medical checkup to make sure he’s 100% after that knockdown. If there’s a lingering problem for Fury going into the rematch with Wilder, he’s not going to last too long.
Wilder is no longer talking about wanting to fight IBF, WBA and WBO champion Anthony Joshua. Wilder feels he and Fury upstaged the 28-year-old British heavyweight.
“He thought he was the only one in this sport, the biggest thing in this sport,” Wilder said of Joshua. “But, you’re not. Me and Fury, that’s all it’s about — me and Fury. I don’t give a f–k what they talking about … He’s on the back-burner. Ain’t nobody talking about him,” Wilder said about Joshua.
The biggest reason no one is talking about Joshua is he hasn’t fought a good heavyweight since his near loss to Wladimir Klitschko last year in April 2017. Since that fight, Joshua has been padding his record against Carlos Takam, Joseph Parker and Alexander Povetkin. Joshua hasn’t shown the ambition to fight Wilder and Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz, the two guys that many boxing fans see as the best heavyweights in the division. Joshua hasn’t shown interest in fighting Fury either.