By Charles Brun: Eddie Hearn says the Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury 2 rematch WON’T be bringing in the huge pay-per-view numbers predicted by Top Rank boss Bob Arum for their February 22 rematch. Arum surprised fans recently when he predicted the Wilder-Fury 2 rematch will top 2 million buys on PPV.
Hearn says the Wilder vs. Fury rematch won’t even do 1 million buys. He says it’s struggling at the box office, and not selling well. Hearn notes that initially there wasn’t supposed to be any press conferences or the Wilder vs. Fury rematch, but they’ve now had 2 in the last two weeks.
Eddie sees this move by Top Rank to as a signal that things aren’t going well with the ticket sales for the fight. Hearn says the initial conference was a mess. Wilder and Fury appeared to lack energy, and there wasn’t the same enthusiasm from them compared to the first fight.
Last Saturday’s second Wilder-Fury press conference was arguably worse than the first one. Both fighters looked sleepy, and there’s a strange drum beat in the background. It was weird.
Fury and Wilder fought to a 12 round draw in December 2018. Fans hate fights that end in a draw, and you can argue that they show less interest in rematches under those conditions. A lot of fans thought Fury should have won the first fight, and they dislike that they have to pay for a second one.
Hearn predicts 500-600K buys for Wilder vs. Fury 2
“Bob’s a classic,” said Hearn to IFL TV when told that Bob Arum is predicting 2 million buys for Wilder vs. Fury 2. “It won’t do 1 million buys in my opinion. If it does 500 or 600,000 buys, that’ll be very good. It’s struggling, and it’s not selling very well in the box office,” said Hearn on Wilder-Fury 2 rematch.
Well, the first fight between Wilder and Fury did approximately 350,000 buys, and brought in $30 million. Those were the best numbers since Roy Jones Jr. vs. John Ruiz Jr. in 2003.
If Wilder vs. Fury 2 brings in nearly double the numbers of the first fight at 600,000 buys, as Hearn predicts, it won’t be such a bad thing. However, with all the money that Top Rank Boxing is paying Fury, they’re likely expecting a bigger return on their investment.
They had Fury take two tune-ups that weren’t cheap against Otto Wallin and Tom Schwarz. Those fights were made in hopes of increasing Fury’s popularity in America, and it doesn’t appear to have worked.
The U.S public are keenly aware of when they’re seeing mismatches, and they’re not fooled by them. So instead of Fury coming out of his 2 fights with Schwarz and Wallin more popular than before in the U.S, he may have lost what little popularity he had. Wilder is the one that will suffer from this. Had he gotten the rematch with Fury right away in early 2019, he’d have likely benefited more.
If Wilder-Fury does bring in 1 million buys, those would be excellent numbers. However, it’s unclear how much Top Rank will need for them to get a return on their investment in Fury. You can second guess Top Rank’s decision to sign Fury, because he’s a finesse fighter.
Wilder-Fury II press conferences a sign of poor sales?
“They weren’t going to do a press conference, and they said that,” said Hearn on Top Rank boss Arum initially saying they wouldn’t do ANY news conferences for the Wilder-Fury 2 rematch. “They’ve done one, and it was a bit of a shambles. So now they’re doing another one on Saturday. And so they’ve gone from, ‘We don’t need a press conference’ to they’ve done two in 2 weeks.
“So it’s not going to do that great, and that’s not because Wilder is not a star or Fury is no good,” continued Hearn. “It’s just that boxing is a tough market in the U.S. I think it’s way, way behind all the other pieces of American football, baseball, hockey, basketball and college football. This is what they’re up against. With us over here, we’re up against Premier League Football. That’s it,” said Hearn.
It definitely was the wrong move on the promoter’s part to rule out press conferences for the Wilder vs. Fury 2 rematch. Arum thought that they wouldn’t be needed because he was going to have both fighters promote their fight during college and professional football games. Wilder and Fury have already started doing that with the college games, and they’ll continue along that path during the Super Bowl game on February 2. However, that may not be enough.
Trying to promote boxing during football games is a questionable move, because these are fans that are more focused on that sport. Trying to sell the Wilder-Fury 2 rematch to distracted fans is probably a bad idea. If anything, the fans will likely be annoyed at Wilder and Fury trying to peddle their rematch.