Bob Arum believes Tyson Fury will be able to put the finish on WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder if he gets him in trouble this Saturday night. Fury had Wilder in trouble on 2 or 3 occasions in their first fight in 2018, but he didn’t have the engine or enough punching power to finish the job.
Fury (29-0-1, 20 KOs) has a new trainer in Sugar Hill Steward, and he’s taught him to throw more shots with power. He thinks he’s going to come right at Wilder (42-0-1, 41 KOs) and beat him at his own game on Saturday when the two square off at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Above all, Top Rank Boxing promoter Bob Arum wants the fans to be entertained by Fury. Arum is paying the 6’9″ British heavyweight a lot of money to fight for his promotional company in hopes of transforming him into a star. It obviously doesn’t help matters that Fury is squawking about wanting to retire after his last three fights of his contract with Top Rank expires.
Thus far, Top Rank hasn’t gotten much from Fury in terms of entertaining fights since they signed him. He’s had 2 matches against European heavyweights Tom Schwarz and Otto Wallin, who were both highly ranked at the time Fury fought them by the World Boxing Organization, but they looked slow, weak and nothing special.
The fan interest in those fights were low. Now that Fury is finally stepping up against the guy that the U.S wanted to see him rematch in 2019, it’s a situation where we don’t know what to expect.
If Fury wins, that’s a big positive for Top Rank and ESPN, but if he loses, and there’s a high chance he will, then they’ve wasted their money on him. If the Wilder-Fury 2 fight brings in over 2 million buys like Arum believes it’ll do, then maybe it’ll have been worth it for the nine figures that they’re paying the 31-year-old Fury.
‘Tyson is a great boxer, but he has the determination to knock out Wilder and he knows that he’s not going to force it and the knockout will come,” said Arum. “And that, unlike the first fight, when he gets Wilder into trouble, and Wilder was in trouble a couple of times in that fight. He’s not going to let him off the hook. He’s going to go for the knockout,” said Arum.
It might be a mistake for Fury to try and fight Wilder’s fight by coming at him looking to punch. Wilder is accustomed to fighting guys with better power and offensive skills than Fury. In Wilder’s last fight, he lost every round to talented Cuban fighter Luis Ortiz before knocking him out with a single right hand in the 7th last November. Fury is a slapper compared to Ortiz, and it doesn’t matter how good of a trainer Sugar Hill is, he’s not going to turn him into the next Jack Dempsey overnight. It’s more likely the case that Sugar Hill will turn Fury into Jess Willard.
“The people know when they watch Tyson Fury, they’re going to get a proper good fight, but they’re going to get more than just a good fight,” Fury said. “They’re going to get a show. They’re going to be entertained. I’ll do things no one else does, so you have to watch to make sure you don’t miss something that everyone is talking about the next day.”
Fury is getting a little carried away in talking about himself. His fights generally are on the dull side. The times where they’re entertaining are when he faces overmatched guys like Schwarz, Steve Cunningham, Nicolai Firtha and Neven Pajkic.
Unfortunately, you got to go back pretty far in Fury’s career to where he fought in an exciting manner. Against Wilder, Dereck Chisora, Wladimir Klitschko, and Francesco Pianeta, he was mostly negative. Those fights were not entertaining to watch. It was amusing BEFORE Fury into the ring. Once the fight started, it was pretty dull.