It’s looking as though Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder will have to wait until a few days before the Christmas holidays before they can settle their rivalry. For although many fans feel Fury has already proven he is the superior fighter of the two – what with his display in the drawn fight making many feel he actually won, and then the total hammering Fury dished out on Wilder in the rematch leaving no doubt – the third fight is contracted and will go ahead.
The working date is now December 19, and Top Rank’s Brad Jacobs told Sky Sports that “we are looking all over the world, at this point, for the best location for this event.”
Jacobs explained how, until the coronavirus is wiped out once and for all, the fight may have to take place in front of a limited audience – perhaps 3,000 or so fans accommodated inside a big, 15,000 capacity venue, so as fans can be safely spread out. The fight, one that will see former WBC heavyweight champ Wilder enter the ring as a considerable, if not whopping, great underdog, could literally be staged anywhere in the world.
“We are focusing on December 19 and are hoping that, by then, we are back to a nearly normal situation,” Jacobs said. “That may be a 50 percent capacity. We are looking all over the world, at this point, for the best location for this event. That will be narrowed down, and we’ll see where it takes us. There are many offers from all over the world. It will land where it lands, for whatever reason. At the moment, there is no real progress for any specific location. We are looking towards what the next step is. A small hall with 1,000 people? A big arena that holds 15,000 but with 3,000 inside? How close can people sit? It’s a huge undertaking to reach this next step.”
But will there actually be that much fan interest in Fury-Wilder III? Will the demand for tickets be considerable or tiny? Most fans feel Fury will absolutely repeat the destruction job he did back in February, and many of these fans may look to save their money, either by not paying to be there on the night or by declining to pay the pay-per-view fee for the fight.
Pretty much everyone agrees on this: it will take one massive effort from Wilder, one completely new game-plan if he’s to manage a revenge win. Can he do it? It sure looks unlikely, and fans are already looking forward to a Fury-Anthony Joshua showdown. Now that’s a fight that will have no trouble shifting tickets or pulling in P-P-V buys.