By Charles Brun: Former WBC heavyweight champion Deontay ‘The Bronze Bomber’ Wilder firmly believes that Tyson Fury is coming up with a grand strategy to game the system to cheat when they meet for their trilogy match on July 24th.
Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) thinks WBC belt holder Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) is coming up with some plan to get an edge against him when they meet for the third time on pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The last time the two fought in February 2020, Wilder was stopped in the seventh round when his ex-trainer Mark Breland threw in the towel.
Wilder, 6’7″, was still standing and fighting back despite his right arm being injured, blood coming out of his left ear, and his legs being gone.
Wilder’s legs were gone after getting nailed by a rabbit shot
Deontay’s legs went to rubber in the third round after Fury clipped him with a peach of a rabbit punch behind the head in knocking him down.
Whether Fury intentionally hit Wilder with a rabbit punch or not is unknown. All we do know is once he nailed Deontay with that shot, the fight was over for all intents and purposes.
The referee working the fight, Kenny Bayless, let stand the knockdown, even though it looked like a clear shot to the back of the head.
You can argue it was a blown call by the referee. From that point on, Wilder’s legs and balance were shot.
Deontay believes Fury coming up with a strategy to cheat
“You think he ain’t going to try to cheat this time? Oh, they’re thinking, they’re coming up with a master plan,” said Deontay Wilder to 78SPORTSTV.
Deontay sounds like he’s lost his trust in Fury that he’ll be following the Marquess of Queensberry rules on July 24th. If this is an all-out war in an anything-goes type of battle plan for Fury, Wilder will have to decide.
Should Wilder foul right alongside Fury or play it clean like he did last time and hope the referee will do his job to control the fouling?
Assuming that the referee will be passive and do nothing to address Fury’s bending of the rules, Wilder will either need to put up with it or get into the mud with him and fight fire with fire.
That would mean Wilder will be fighting tooth & nail, throwing everything at Fury to get on the same level.
You can argue that if Wilder does that, it’s going to make the referee look weak and ineffectual if he stands there and gawks at the blatant dirty pool going on in front of his eyes by both fighters.
“But you couldn’t even get me out on loaded gloves and the conditions I was under. You didn’t knock me out.”
As you can see, Deontay is convinced that Fury will be coming up with some method to cheat him on July 24th. He’s not saying what it will be, but he thinks that the 6’9″ Fury will be trying something.
Obviously, Fury’s gloves will be checked out in the dressing room before the fight, just like every fighter. Deontay needs to be worried about the punches to the back of the head more than anything.
The last time they fought, the rabbit punches Fury was throwing appeared to be the real game-changer in the fight because Wilder looked mentally & physically out of it after getting hit with one of those shots in the third.
Ideally, Wilder’s trainer Malik Scott will need to speak with the referee before the fight to tell them they want Fury’s rabbit punching policed.
Aside from there, there’s not much Deontay can do about it. If Fury is going to be throwing rabbit punches and the referee not doing anything, it could be a race against time for Wilder.
In other words, Deontay will need to try and knock Fury out as fast as possible before he hurts him badly with a rabbit shot.
In a perfect world, the referee will immediately warn Fury and/or penalize Fury if one or more of his shots hit Deontay in the back of his head.
Disqualification would be the best thing if Fury resists being policed by the referee and continues to nail Deontay with rabbit shots.
Wilder says there WON’T be a fourth Fury fight
“This [third fight] closes the chapter of me and Fury,” said Deontay when asked if there will be a trilogy match with the Gypsy King.
“My mind is very violent right now, and I’m trying to end his career and other things as well; I’m going to let you fill in the blank,” said Deontay.
It’s hard to believe Wilder won’t throw a bone to Fury to give him a fourth fight if he knocks him cold on July 24th, but if he retires him, the decision will be out of his hands.
Will Fury fall off the wagon after he loses?
The thing is, we don’t know how Fury will react to getting beaten by Deontay because he’s never lost before. We’ve seen how Fury reacted after winning some of his important fights by physically letting himself go, putting on a ton of weight.
What happens if Fury loses. Do we see him REALLY let himself go? If so, it could prove to be impossible for Fury to lose all the weight again if he balloons up to 400 lbs.
Yeah, Fury took the weight off before when he did that, but he was younger than in his 20s.
Things are different now. Fury is in his early 30s, and if he packs on 150 lbs of fat, it’s doubtful whether he could take that kind of weight off without his effectiveness inside the ring disappearing.
Tyson Fury has physically aged since last year
What you have to wonder about is whether Fury still has it. With the year and a half that Fury has been out of the ring since his last fight against Deontay, he looks like he’s aged considerably.
When you compare pictures of how Fury looked a year ago in his second fight with Wilder and look at him now, he appears to have aged badly.
Everyone has their own aging clock, and Fury’s looks like it’s advanced all of a sudden. Right now, he looks like he’s nearing 40, and that’s not good. In contrast, Deontay still looks like his youthful self, the same as three years ago when he first fought Fury.