By Max Schramm: Eddie Hearn says the promoters would have potentially taken a huge financial bath had the Tyson Fury vs. Deontay Wilder III trilogy match taken place on July 24th as scheduled.
As of now, the Fury-Wilder 3 fight has now been postponed until October, but it’s unclear whether it’ll take place then or if it gets pushed back further.
Hearn states the poor ticket sales and the likely terrible pay-per-view numbers for the Fury-Wilder 3 fight; the promoters might have lost massive money, as much as $20 million for the event.
Instead of the fight being a money maker, it could have hemorrhaged the green stuff.
With huge guaranteed purses for WBC heavyweight champion Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) and Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs), the pay-per-view and the gate revenue likely wouldn’t have been nearly enough to cover the costs.
According to Hearn, the only option the promoters had for the Fury – Wilder III event was to “abort” and try and “reset” for a later time. Hearn doesn’t understand why it’s being rescheduled for October, as he doesn’t think the fight will occur.
Indeed, if there’s no interest from boxing fans to see Fury face Wilder again in July, why would any of that change by kicking it down the road to October?
It’s like the promoters for the Fury vs. Wilder event are putting off a huge problem, hoping it’ll go away in three months.
Hearn calls Fury vs. Wilder 3 promotion “Disjointed”
“When we found out this fight was dead, our original date was August 14th for the fight,” said Eddie Hearn to DAZN Boxing Show.
“We sat down with AJ and said, ‘Usyk, let’s just book it in for August 14th.’ He was like, and the team was like, ‘I just spent the last four or five months training for Tyson Fury, sparring for Tyson Fury. Firstly, this is really deflating, and secondly, I’m fighting a completely different fighter who I need a completely different camp for and a completely different sparring partner.’
So we delayed it until seven weeks later to give him [Joshua] the chance that he’s not fighting Fury to reset mentally and reset in camp and go in again.
So when you’re due to fight AJ and supposedly fighting AJ, then they tell you’re fighting Wilder in eight weeks, just the whole thing stunk,” said Hearn about Fury suddenly going from fighting Joshua on August 14th to facing Wilder on July 24th in a trilogy match.
“It’s so disjointed everywhere,” Hearn continued. “You’ve got eight people working on a fight that don’t particularly like each other.”
The switch from Fury fighting IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua on August 14th to suddenly facing Wilder on July 24th was a crazy turnaround.
That had to have been mentally tough on Fury, as he was looking forward to fighting Joshua for the undisputed championship.
Fury was knocked for a loop there with the Joshua fight pulled out from under him by the arbitrator, who ruled that Tyson must face Wilder.
It’s understandable why the boxing public in the U.S wasn’t eager to see the third fight between Fury and Wilder.
They had seen Fury beat Wilder convincingly in 2020, and it didn’t make sense for them to run it back without either of them facing anyone else in between.
It was more important for Wilder to come back from that fight to redeem himself in the eyes of the U.S boxing fans, as he looked so poor against Fury. When you have a fight outcome as decisive as the Fury vs. Deontay II clash was, it’s pretty much impossible to try and sell the third match.
Fury-Wilder III needs to be reset
“I don’t know. If you’re sitting there and you’ve got two guys [Wilder & Fury] that are on a 60-40 split,” said Hearn. “Now, in some scenarios, those guys won’t be on a guarantee; they’ll just be taking the revenue from the fight.
“In another scenario, the promoters will be guaranteeing them a purse or a minimum purse for that fight.
“So if you’re sitting there at the show and you’re saying, ‘Okay, this gate was supposed to take fifteen million dollars, and we’ve sold three million dollars worth of tickets.’
“Then you do a press conference, and Deontay Wilder sits there with headphones on the whole time, and your budgeting this show to do one million pay-per-view buys, and you’re sitting there saying, ‘This might only do 300,000,'” said Hearn.
“Number one, if the fighters are on the money with no guarantee, they’re looking at it like, ‘Well, I thought I was going to make twenty-five million dollars. I might walk away with ten million.’
“If Top Rank or somebody else is guaranteeing that twenty-five million dollars, they’re looking at it and saying, ‘I might lose twenty million dollars on the guarantees all-around. So we need to abort and reset and try and sell this thing.’
“And it’s very strange to say that it’s [Fury vs. Wilder III] is going to happen in October, and Bob Arum said Fury was fully vaccinated,” said Hearn.
Above all, Fury’s trilogy fight with Wilder will need a long promotion for it to make money.
Wilder can’t be wearing his headphones, not speaking, and choosing not to participate in press conferences. That’s not going to work.
Somehow, the promoters for the match will need to convince Wilder about the importance that he helps out with the marketing of the fight because it’s going to be a disaster if Fury is the only one talking.
It’s not enough for Wilder’s coach Malik Scott to be his mouthpiece because the boxing fans want to hear Deontay speak because they need to believe that he can win for them to want to pay $80 or whatever it costs them to order it on PPV.
It doesn’t look good for the promoters for the Fury vs. Wilder 3 fight, with them pushing the fight to October.
It’s probably not going to make money in October. Wilder wants his rematch, but if the money isn’t there to cover the costs, it might be better off pushing the fight into 2022.
If Top Rank put some of their stars on the undercard of the Fury -Wilder 3 rematch, that might help attract some interest.