By Jim Maltzman: Deontay Wilder has won his arbitration case for his contractual trilogy match against Tyson Fury, and the fight takes place by September 15th.
Just moments ago, Mark Kriegel of ESPN reported the news of the arbitrator ruling in former WBC heavyweight champion Wilder’s favor.
This is the worst possible news for Joshua-Fury, and it’s going to be interesting to see how Fury and Joshua’s promoters attempt to keep their planned August 14th fight.
It’s possible they could pay Wilder a step aside fee so their August fight can still go ahead, but you’d have to imagine he would want many millions. It might be prohibitive to pay Wilder because of the cost involved.
This is terrible news for Fury’s plans on facing Anthony Joshua for the undisputed heavyweight championship on August 14th in Saudi.
Last Sunday, Fury was already celebrating the fight with Joshua on the verge of being done, which an odd thing for him to do given that the arbitrator hadn’t finished ruling on his case.
Breaking: an arbitrator has ruled that @Tyson_Fury and @BronzeBomber must face each other in a rematch by September 15, 2021. MORE TK
— Mark Kriegel (@MarkKriegel) May 17, 2021
Fury had gotten way ahead of himself, announcing the fight with Joshua on Twitter, even though the Arbitration case hadn’t been concluded. It doesn’t matter that Fury already announced the fight with Joshua.
The arbitrator’s ruling means that Fury must face Wilder by September 15th, and that’s a fight that he could lose.
Even promoter Eddie Hearn seemed to be in the celebratory mood on Monday.
The only ones that seemed to be holding back were Top Rank promoter Bob Arum and Joshua. They obviously knew better than to start giving high fives before the arbitrator had ruled on Fury’s case.
You can argue that there’s a lesson here for fighters like WBC heavyweight champion Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs). If you have a contract to fight an opponent, you don’t walk away from that fight when you see a more lucrative one down the road.
Fury asked for trouble not to give Wilder his contractual rematch after beating him last year in February. Had Fury given Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) in late 2020, there wouldn’t be this problem right now.
With that said, the danger that Wilder posed for Fury was perhaps too much for him to want to take the fight. As a result, Fury opted not to face Wilder at the end of last year for the rematch, and now he has this problem that he’ll need to deal with.