By Trevor McIntyre: As expected, the purse bid for the Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury rematch was postponed once again, according to ESPN due to the two sides being close to making a deal for a fight on April 27 or May 18 in New York. This was the second time the purse bid for the Wilder-Fury 2 fight was postponed.
The first purse bid was postponed last week. It was supposed to take last Tuesday at the World Boxing Council’s headquarters in Mexico City. They postponed it for a week, and now that one has been postponed as well. Despite the 2 postponements, Wilder’s co-manager Shelly Finkel remains upbeat that he’ll be able to put a deal together with Fury’s promoter by beginning of next week.
“Things have gotten delayed a little, but as far as I know there are no issues,” said Finkel to ESPN.com. “I would hope the fight is completed late this week or early next week.”
There are no big pay-per-view fights that will get in the way of the Wilder-Fury rematch to take away interest from the fight. WBA/WBC middleweight champion Saul Canelo Alvarez will be facing IBF champion Daniel Jacobs on May 4 on DAZN, but that fight won’t be pay-per-view. If that fight were PPV, it would likely hurt the PPV sales for the Wilder vs. Fury rematch, as boxing fans might be reluctant to order two PPV fights that close to each other. It increases their monthly cable bill significantly when the PPV fights are bunched together.
Fury (27-0-1, 19 KOs) gave the unbeaten KO artist Wilder (40-0-1, 39 KOs) all he could handle in their previous fight on December 1 in fighting him to a 12 round draw on SHOWTIME PPV at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The scores were 115-111 for the 6’7″ Deontay, 114-112 for the 30-year-old and 113-113 even. Although many boxing fans felt that the 6’9″ Fury deserved the win, he was knocked down twice in the later rounds, which undermined his chances of getting the win. Fury was put down hard in the 12th round by a big 1-2 combination from Wilder. The referee Jack Reiss gave a count to Fury despite the fact that Tyson appeared to be unconscious. Some boxing fans felt this was highly unusual for a count to be given a seemingly unconscious fighter. Fury then opened his eyes early in the count and dragged himself off the canvas and was able to finish the fight on his feet. Wilder was throwing wild home run punches in the remainder of the round, looking to finish Fury, but he was unable to catch him cleanly with anything. Both fighters were unsatisfied with the draw, and said they wished to face each other in a rematch. Several weeks later, the WBC ordered Wilder and Fury to face each other in a rematch. They both could have made deals with IBO/WBA/WBO champion Anthony Joshua for good money, but they chose to face each other again.
Wilder and Fury are expected to make a lot of money from their rematch. Their previous fight brought in 325,000 PPV buys on SHOWTIME last December. The rematch could bring in even more due to the fireworks in their previous fight. The second fight sells itself. Fury could make close to $25 million for the rematch. That’s about the same amount Joshua will be making for his next title defense against Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller in June. It’s good money for a challenger. It shows how much money can be made from U.S PPV sales. Joshua is with Matchroom Boxing, and his fights in the U.S will be shown on DAZN. At home in the UK, Joshua’s fights are sold on Sky Box Office. If and when Joshua ever faces Wilder, their fight will likely be shown on SHOWTIME PPV, and that’ll give AJ a big bump in pay from what he’s been getting.