Deontay Wilder and his management are looking force his trilogy fight with WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury through mediation. If Wilder gets his way, his next step will be mediation this week.
According to ‘The Athletic, the contract for the third fight between Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) and ‘The Bronze Bomber’ Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) wants to keep the reluctant Fury fro moving on and facing bottom-ranked #15 WBC Agit Kabayael next rather than him.
Wilder had a rematch clause from his second fight against Fury, 32, earlier this year in February. However, Fury and his promoters at Top Rank believe that they no longer need to give Wilder another fight after failing to agree to a fight in December. Wilder has been dealing with a bicep injury.
The mediator will be a retired judge, says Coppinger. He’ll look over the contracts and be in charge of the arbitration.
“We’re going into it very optimistically this week,” Wilder’s co-manager, Shelly Finkel, said to The Athletic.
Wilder exercised the rematch clause he had in his contract from their February 22nd fight. The two were supposed to fight in July, but Wilder suffered a bicep injury that delayed the match.
The next date for the Fury-Wilder 3 fight was on October 3, but the pandemic got in the way. The match was then pushed to December 19th, but FOX and ESPN opted to move the Fury vs. Wilder III contest to next year due to college football getting in the way.
Fury says he wants to stay active and not wait around for the third contest with Wilder. So instead of facing Wilder, Fury is planning on fighting Kabayel on December 5th. But as far as Wilder goes, Fury and his team believe the contract has run out.
If Wilder gets his way and is given the trilogy match, it’s going to burn Fury’s britches because he doesn’t fancy the idea of fighting Wilder again. In an interview this week with Gareth A. Davies, Fury vowed to “Never” give Wilder another shot against him after the comments he made about him.
Wilder had said that he thinks that Fury had something in his gloves when they fought their rematch last February. Wilder suspects that the eggshell size dent on the left side of his skull came from Fury.
It’s unclear if Wilder’s comments are the driving force behind Fury not giving him his contractual rematch. Suppose that’s why it’ll be interesting to see what happens in mediation this week with the retired judge.
If Fury is ordered to give Wilder the rematch, can he get out of the fight by vacating the WBC title? It’s hard to imagine Fury wanting to avoid Wilder to the point where he would vacate his WBC title to get out of fighting him again.
“Breaking: Deontay Wilder is attempting to enforce a trilogy fight with Tyson Fury through mediation, which is expected to begin this week. The contract calls for binding arbitration after mediation, sources tell @TheAthletic,” said Mike Coppinger.