By William Lloyd: Promoter Bob Arum insists that Tyson Fury has not been affected by the postponement of his trilogy fight with Deontay Wilder, losing the U.S arbitrator’s case or by coming down with COVID-19 recently.
More than anything that’s happened to Fury in the last six months, losing his arbitration hearing with Wilder was probably the biggest negative.
When the U.S arbitration hearing results were revealed, Fury was set to pick up a $100+ million payday against Anthony Joshua for August 14th in Saudi Arabia.
The arbitrator ruled against Fury, saying that he must fight Wilder a third time. That decision cost Fury a fortune, and that had to have been tough for him to digest mentally.
With all that going on, Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) remains, as always, an unflappable person who will be defending his WBC heavyweight title against Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) on October 9th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Fans need to tune in for this one because this could be the final time Fury and Wilder face each other, unfortunately. If the former WBC champion Wilder doesn’t put in a better effort, he’s going to get beaten decisively once again, which should put an end to their rivalry.
Has Fury gone downhill?
“I’m not a psychiatrist, but I spent considerable time with Fury after the arbitrator’s decision then after his diagnosis,” Top Rank’s Arum told Sky Sports.
“It seemed to me he wasn’t affected by anything,” Arum continued about Fury. “Tyson had a great mentality, and none of these issues have any effect. Is he fooling me? Fooling himself? I don’t think so,” said Arum.
The only concern is whether Fury has slipped physically and lost a step from the year and a half out of the ring. Fury last fought in February 2020, and he seems to have been taking it easy, celebrating his victory over Wilder a little too long.
It’s a bad sign if the rumors are true that Fury was beaten up repeatedly by his sparring partners Jared Anderson and Efe Ajagba during training camp for the postponed July 24th fight.
When you’re at the championship level, as Fury is, you can lose it if you stop training and get too focused on celebrating. That’s always been a problem for Fury.
After he pulls off big victories, he tends to slack off, rest on the couch, gain wait and talk endlessly about his triumph. Fury is not very good at moving on to the next one and staying in shape.
Assuming the rumors of Fury being knocked out by Jared Anderson and dominated by him and Ajagba are true, it could be that he’s lost enough of his skills to the point where he’s going to be vulnerable against Wilder.
“None of this has affected him adversely. It was negligence on all of our parts – Top Rank’s and Tyson’s,” said Arum on Fury testing positive for COVID-19. “Tyson had a relatively mild case but had heavy breathing and congestion,” said Arum.
Fans DON’T believe Fury had COVID-19
What Arum isn’t saying is that boxing fans don’t believe that Fury ever had a case of COVID-19.
They think he was getting beaten up by his sparring partners, and realized that he had NO chance of beating Wilder, so he came up with the COVID-19 excuse to buy himself more time to prepare for the fight.
If what the fans believe is true about Fury, he’s got three extra months to train for the Wilder fight. That’s time Fury can use to bulk up to the 270s, which is where his weight was when he fought Wilder in 2020.
In Fury’s recent posts on social media, he’s talked about hitting the weights and trying to build up his strength/size for the trilogy match with Deontay.
This reinforces the belief that Fury was getting battered by his sparring partners Jared Anderson and Efe Ajagba, so he needed more time to train for the Wilder match.