By Chris Williams: There will NOT be a press tour to promote the February 22 rematch between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury, according to @MikeCoppinger. Instead of Top Rank having a press tour, the fight will be marketed by WBC heavyweight champion Wilder (42-0-1, 41 KOs) and Fury (29-0-1, 20 KOs) during 2 college football bowl games this Saturday.
Sadly, football fans won’t know who Fury and Wilder are, and they might not be receptive to them trying to peddle their high priced PPV fight to people that have NO interest in the sport of boxing.
Speaking from a personal standpoint, I tune out entirely MMA advertisements on TV when I’m watching boxing. I turn the volume or I turn the channel. I have no interest in that sport. For a lot of football fans, they’re going to be annoyed at seeing Fury and Wilder asking them to purchase their February 22 fight
Wilder will be at the Alabama vs Duke. For his part, Fury will be in Arizona on Saturday for a bowl game. The idea is that with millions of fans watching the bowl games in Alabama and Arizona, the boxing promoters will take advantage of all the attention those two bowl games get by using the opportunity to advertise the Wilder vs. Fury 2 rematch to those fans. The downside is obvious. You’re preaching to fans of football, not boxing, and it could be a big waste of time.
No face offs for Wilder and Fury 2 likely until week of the fight
Without a press tour for the Wilder-Fury 2 rematch, it means that we won’t see any face offs or experience the huge amount of buzz that an important fight like this generates from to city. It saves the promoters money when they don’t do press tours.
In this case, Fury’s promoters at Top Rank, and Wilder’s management at Premier Boxing Champions are likely assuming that the Wilder-Fury 2 fight sells itself due to the buzz created. So instead of putting a lot of money into a worldwide or even a national press tour, they’ll do the advertising during the college football game this Saturday, and count on being able to hook casual boxing fans to want to watch the fight.
Casual fans will forget Wilder-Fury 2 advertising
Unluckily, the Wilder vs. Fury 2 rematch is still 8 weeks away, so it’s highly unlikely that the viewers will still remember the existence of the fight by February 22. Using football games to advertise Wilder-Fury 2 would make sense if the fight were to happen this Saturday night or a week from now, but not 8 weeks. That’s a lifetime away.
Casual boxing fans aren’t going to remember the December 28 advertisement for the February 22 fight between Wilder and Fury rematch for that long. So unless promoters have another way of advertising the Fight, a lot of casuals won’t know it’s happening.
Both college and the NFL football seasons are going to be over in January, and the promoters will have to come up with another idea to advertise the Wilder-Fury 2 fight.
Wilder vs. Fury 2 is taking place at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas. This will be a joint pay-per-view event by ESPN and Fox Sports. In the UK, the pay-per-view carrier is still being decided between BT and Sky Sports
Wilder vs. Fury rematch will be 3-fight telecast on PPV
Instead of boxing fans getting to see 4 fights when ordering Wilder-Fury 2, they’ll only be seeing 3. That be disappointing to some people, because they’re used to getting more for their money.
One idea for the co-feature is potentially have the Top Rank promoted heavyweight Kubrat Pulev face Adam Kownacki. Those two could be fighting for the IBF title if the current IBF belt holder Anthony Joshua chooses to vacate that belt, and keep his WBO title. Joshua has mandatory defenses due at the same time for his IBF and WBO belts.
