Tyson Fury says he won’t pay Deontay Wilder one cent for him to step aside to face Anthony Joshua on August 14th in Saudi.
Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) instead plans on facing the former WBC heavyweight champion Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) next to “crack his skull wide open.”
It obviously takes a strong person to walk away from a $75 million payday against Joshua (24-1, 22 KOs) to take a risky fight against the knockout artist Wilder, which will pay Fury only a fraction of what he would have made.
Is that a sign of Fury’s strength of character or just plain stubbornness and ineptitude? From a business standpoint, it makes a heck of a lot more sense to pay Wilder off, see it as a learning lesson, and plow ahead with the Joshua fight on August 14th.
After all, there wouldn’t have been a problem for Fury if he’d gone along with his contractual rematch with Wilder from a year ago. It was a mistake on Fury’s part not to give Wilder his rematch last year or early this year.
So instead of Fury looking at Wilder as the villain for pushing for his rematch during a time that is inconvenient for him, he needs to understand that he brought this on himself. With that in mind, Fury would be better off giving Wilder the step aside and learning from this collosol blunder that he made.
Fury will be stubborn about not giving Wilder a step aside deal, and this could blow up in his face if he gets destroyed by the ‘Bronze Bomber.’
You’d like to think that Fury’s promoters at Top Rank have been trying to convince him to pay Wilder the step aside to get him out of the way. It’s unlikely that’s the case. They’re willing to gamble that Fury will beat Wilder and then face Joshua later this year. That might be the case but may not.
One thing that has been lost in all this is whether the huge $155 million site deal from Saudi will still be there for the Joshua vs. Fury fight if the match is delayed until November or December?
Given the blackeye that Fury just received with him losing his arbitration case with Wilder, will the Saudis still be willing to pay $155 million for a site deal, or will they be turned off by this latest news and want to distance themselves from being a part of the Joshua-Fury fight?
You never know. If you’re Fury, do you want to take the chance on the Saudis choosing to walk away from his fight with Joshua if it’s delayed until later this year?
“This has gone on far too long,” said Chris Mannix to DAZN about Anthony Joshua losing out on the Fury fight. “He was trying to get a fight against Deontay Wilder in a unification. That didn’t happen.
“The Tyson Fury situation has been going on for months now in large part because of the pandemic, and this comes up. It’s got to be an incredibly frustrating time for Anthony Joshua.
“All he can do is plow ahead with the fight with Tyson Fury and see if Fury gets sued for breach of contract. Suppose he’s stripped of the [WBC] title, big deal.
“We’d love to see a full unification fight between Fury and Joshua, but do we really care that much? I care much more about these two guys [Joshua and Fury] getting in the ring than I do what titles may be on the line on fight night.
“So if I’m AJ, I’m looking to do anything possible to make that fight happen. I don’t expect a resolution to this anytime soon. In fact, I expect Team Wilder to hold Team Fury and Team Joshua hostage until they get the best deal humanly possible.”