By Darren Paradise: So Anthony Joshua has three recognized world titles with an Olympic Gold medal and Deontay Wilder has that prestigious green belt. Both of these fighters lay claim to being ‘The Heavyweight Champion of the World,’ a title which will define their lives and legacy for evermore. They join a list of fighters who have also achieved this monumental goal that each and every boxer dreams about the moment they lace on their first pair of gloves.
Great fighters that go back generations are on that list such as Jersey Joe Walcott, Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, Lennox Lewis and of course both Klitschko’s.
Thanks to an upset victory over Wladimir Klitschko in Dusseldorf back in 2015, Tyson Fury already has his name etched in the list referred to above. But there is another list of ‘Heavyweight Champions’ this is a list that transcends boxing, this is a list that assures you are remembered for all of times. For me there are only four post war heavyweight champions that make this list. Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Mike Tyson. Each one of these fighters are there due to circumstance, an undefeated record with an untimely death, a man who’s boxing skills and feats were second to none but still did not compare to the aura felt by any that met him, a man that had found God and used his new found belief to inspire a comeback and win a world title twenty years after his previous reign, and of course a ferocious, brutal man whose rise and fall in and out of the ring were played out in the public eye for all to see.
Deontay Wilder, desperate for a high profile name to boost his own popularity, picks what HE believed was a ‘shot’ fighter. That’s where circumstance came back into play. After two years of inactivity with mental health issues and being grotesquely overweight, any top flight comeback seemed at best unlikely for Tyson Fury. The fight was gripping from start to finish but when Fury got back up in that final round after everything he had been through he created a pathway to join that list of immortals.
Now is the time for Tyson Fury to ‘seize the day’. I do not know anything about Tom Schwarz and I really do not care about the $100’s of millions of dollars offered to Tyson by ESPN. What I do know is that Tyson Fury donated his Wilder purse to charity. This is not a man motivated by money, he must not let himself be told what direction his career is going to take. He MUST unify the heavyweight titles and he must unify them NOW a loss suffered by either Anthony Joshua or Wilder prior to Fury getting to them will close that pathway to immortality. ‘Seize the day’ Tyson and never be forgotten.