By Scott Gilfoid: Shannon Briggs says there’s a genuine possibility that Deontay Wilder will sleep Tyson Fury in their trilogy match on July 24th, and Oleksandr Usyk will defeat Anthony Joshua in their last clash on August 21 or 28th.
Joshua and Fury’s career could be pretty much over by next year after they deal with their respective summer opponents.
Briggs predicts that boxing could see a fight between Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) and Usyk soon after these two pull-off upset wins this summer over the British heavyweight.
Starting with the Fury-Wilder 3 trilogy match on July 24th, it could send a shockwave to the division. Briggs wonders out loud whether ‘The Gypsy King’ Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) has made the correct decision to take the fight with Wilder.
After all, Fury and his promoters at Top Rank could have paid Wilder a $20 million step aside and taken the bigger-money fight against IBF/WBA/WBO champion Joshua (24-1, 22 KOs) on August 14th in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Fury would have made $80 million for the Joshua fight, which is a heck of a lot more than the $20M he’s expected to get for his risky trilogy match against Wilder. How do you walk away from an $80 million payday? It’s dumb, dumb, and dumb.
Had Fury not been so cheap, he could have given Wilder the $20+ million step aside and still come out ahead with $60 million. Look at it this way:
If Fury loses to Deontay on July 24th, he can forget about ever getting a $60 million payday against Joshua. That’ll be a pipedream at that point.
What happens if Wilder stops Fury?
“If this guy knocks out Fury, then what?” said Briggs to Sky sports on Fury’s July 24th fight against Wilder.
“It is possible. Will there be a fourth fight?” Briggs said. “Fury can’t sleep on Wilder. We’ve got to look at this for what it is – a 200lbs man? With those skinny legs he shouldn’t hit that hard!
“But he [Deontay] hits sickly hard. It isn’t normal to hit that hard. But he can’t fight backing up.”
It’s obvious what will happen if Wilder knocks Fury out cold in their trilogy match on July 24th. Knowing Fury, his “fighting man” pride will get the better of him, and he’ll insist on facing Wilder in a fourth fight.
It’s easy to predict that Fury will choose to face Wilder in a fourth match if he gets starched in their summer fight on July 24th.
Unfortunately, Fury’s career will be on the line literally in a fourth contest against the 6’7″ Deontay. It could go badly for Fury, especially if he’s still half-stunned from the knockout that he receives from Wilder in July.
We can predict that Fury and his promoters will try and stack the deck in their favor by forcing the fourth match with Deontay over to the UK and placing it in a stadium full of rabid pro-Fury fans.
With Wilder’s punching power, it might not matter. You can take the fourth Fury fight to planet Neptune with its hazardous 1,200 mph wind speeds, and Wilder would be in a position to knock Fury out once again to put an end to his once-promising career.
Usyk = King-sized Lomachenko
“The fight to get ready for is Usyk vs Wilder!” said Briggs. “We might have to get ready for that.”
“He is a king-sized Vasiliy Lomachenko!” Briggs said.”As the rounds go on, he gets stronger.
“The best chance for AJ is to catch him early. AJ is strong early, Usyk is strong late,” said Briggs.
Joshua choosing to stubbornly hold onto his WBO title to defend it against mandatory Usyk is a wrong-headed move on his part.
Not only is Joshua losing money and turning off a lot of fans by taking this fight, but he’s facing the equivalent of a “king-sized Vasily Lomachenko,” as Briggs points out.
This fight could end badly for Joshua, putting him in the situation where he would need to face Usyk in a rematch. If Joshua loses twice to Usyk, his career will be on skidrow like that of Fury.
By the end of next year, Joshua and Fury may be finished and ready for the scrap heap.