By Kenneth Friedman: Tyson Fury’s promoter Bob Arum addressed the rumors about the loaded gloves for Fury and the spiked water for Deontay Wilder for their rematch last February. Arum says the conspiracy theorists have it wrong. Fury’s gloves weren’t loaded, and nobody spiked wilder’s water.
Arum is surprised by how implausible the conspiracy theories are from whoever started them. In Arum’s view, the rumors suggest that someone doesn’t understand the process of what takes place before fights in terms of glove inspection and the handling of water for the fighters.
Recently, rumors have taken off from people saying that the reason why former WBC heavyweight champion Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KO) looked so poor against Fury (30-0-1 21 KOs) because someone had supposedly spiked his water.
As the wacky rumor goes, someone from Fury’s team was enlisted help from Wilder’s team to put something in his drink before the fight to make him sluggish and weak. Further, the second rumor is Fury had loaded gloves with a metal object, which explains why Wilder suffered a cut over his left ear during the rematch.
Arum refutes spiked water and tampered gloves
“Yeah, I heard. Only people that know nothing about boxing in Nevada would make an accusation like that because it’s so absurd,” said Arum to Sporting Icon on the rumors of Fury’s gloves having a metal object in them. “For example, the water.
“Neither camp has anything to do with the water. The water is provided by the Nevada Athletic Commission, and neither camp touches the other camps’ water. So how could they spike it? That’s ludicrous. It cannot happen.
“As far as the gloves are concerned, in Nevada for all fights, including this fight and all main events fights, what happens is on the day before right after the weigh-in, the gloves are presented on a table.
“The fighters then pick their gloves, which are unexpected by the Commission, and then sign the gloves, and they’re put in sealed containers, which is kept by the Commission and are kept under seal and not released to either fight camp until right before the fight.
“In other words, you come into the dressing room, and they present your gloves, and they have your signature on them in this sealed container. So how can there be any complaint about anybody’s gloves under those circumstances? ‘Maybe when they gave them the gloves, they switched them for other gloves.’
“Well, that can’t happen because they have inspectors from Nevada in those dressing rooms, and the fighter has to put on the gloves that the Commission has given them, which the fighter has previously signed.
“So the idea that there was something with the gloves is absurd. Those are the two elements where it was clear that nothing could have happened just because of the normal procedures of the Athletic Commission,” said Arum.
There you have it, the gloves are inspected ahead of time, and given out before the fight. The Commission is there in the fighters’ dressing rooms during the process for when they’re gloved up.
The Commission is in charge of the water, says Arum. However, that probably won’t stop conspiracy theorists from staying that someone put something in Wilder’s water inside the dressing room.
Arum says conspiracy theory is absurd
“First of all, how would Wilder know anything about the gloves and the water?” said Arum when told that Wilder has been saying these things happened. “Deontay, I guarantee you, has never told them that because it’s just so absurd.
“If I wanted to come up with a conspiracy theory, I could come up with a lot better one that couldn’t be disproved. These are disproven on their face. I’m not saying that one a good guy and the other is a bad guy. It’s just not possible.
“I’ve been in this sport for over 50 years, and I’ve heard a lot worse after one guy got beaten as decisively as Wilder got beaten, where a lot of people around him are making up these excuses.
“Now today, because of social media. In my day, the papers would be reluctant to print something like that, so it would be just scuttlebutt that people heard. Now they put everything on these damn social media platforms.
“So all this crap gets circulated around the world, and so that’s the difference now from what it was years ago, where the same kind of rumors used to come out after every big fight.
“Who is going to bother to bring an action against people like that probably if you were lucky in finding them and suing them, you might recover enough to buy a package of cigarettes,” said Arum.
Wilder hasn’t come out and commented on these rumors. There’s nothing from Wilder to suggest that he’s the one that started the rumors and got boxing fans excited about this stuff. It would have been nice if Wilder had gone public and addressed these rumors to distance himself from them.
Arum: Wilder had nothing to do with rumors
“I’m convinced that Deontay Wilder has nothing to do with this because it’s so ludicrous,” continued Arum. “Maybe if it were something that was even possible, you could say, ‘Maybe, you know, he shouldn’t have done it and this.’
“But he’s not going to be part of a rumor on something, because of the way boxing works because he’s aware of, he’s won a number of times in Nevada, just is not possible.
“Yeah, and I predicted the round, so why don’t they say the fight was fixed?” said Arum about him accurately predicting Fury would win and also picking the exact round. “‘Bob Arum said it would happen and it happened that way. How did he know? He knows because he fixed it.'” said Arum.
For a lot of boxing fans, they ignored the recent conspiracy theories on the Wilder vs. Fury 2 fight after Deontay didn’t validate them by speaking up. Wilder has said nothing on his social media platform and not given interviews on the subject.
Wilder has puncher’s chance
“If he fights the way he fought last time, then no chance,” said Arum when asked if he gives Wilder a shot at beating Fury in the trilogy match. “He can change his style and be more elusive, and he still has that puncher’s chance.
“So it could be a completely different fight from the fight we saw in February. I would still make Fury a big favorite to win that fight. But it’s boxing, and you’re in with a guy with a tremendous punch.
“If he changes his style, then maybe he’s able to throw that punch with effect. We’ll see. That’s his only chance. George [Foreman] is a good guy, and George fought for us all of his comeback career. George is a great psychologist, and a lot of boxing is mental.
“If George is going to make an improvement in Wilder, it’s going to be in the area of the mental area,” said Arum.
Like in the first two fights, Wilder will have his normal puncher’s chance against Fury in their trilogy match. Wilder is going to need to change a lot from his game for him to have a shot at winning the fight against the much heavier 270+ pound Fury
. For starters, Wilder will need to mobile in the third match, and not let Fury come right at him to use his size advantage. It’s going to be difficult for Wilder to move around the ring because that’s something he’s never done during his career.
Despite having a basketball player’s frame, he doesn’t move well for someone so lean and seemingly athletic looking. Surprisingly, Fury has shown better movement in both of their first two fights.
Latest Fury-Wilder conspiracy theory not plausible
“If they’re going to come up with a story, do your research first, so it has some degree of plausibility,” said Arum in his advice to the Wilder conspiracy theorists. “That’s something that’s denied on the basis that it’s impossible that it ever happened.
“Come up with a scenario where there’s a possibility that it could have happened because that’s harder to disprove. No, Shelly is a professional. Someone that is a professional could only laugh at something like this. It’s like saying, ‘Fury interfered with my ability to fight because he put some Jock Itch in my protective cup.’ Right?
“Maybe he ould have done that, who knows? The Commission doesn’t regulate the kind of cup they use. Maybe that could be a possibility? Don’t start that rumor. Do you see? You get to the area of absurdity.
“I don’t even look at it as damage control. At least it keeps the name of Fury and Wilder out front, so people continue to talk about them. That’s the good side,” said Arum.
There were too many elements in play with the latest conspiracy theories, and it comes across like someone was reaching to make sense of what happened to Deontay last February.
