Deontay Wilder’s new trainer Malik Scott has ruled out ‘The Bronze Bomber’ accepting a step aside payment for him to allow Tyson Fury to avoid the arbitrator’s ruling that he must face him by September 15th.
Malik Scott says Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) has no intention in agreeing to a step aside to let Fury move forward to face Anthony Joshua on August 14th. Deontay wants “retribution” against ‘The Gypsy King’ to even the score after losing to him by a seventh-round knockout in February 2020 in their rematch.
The two had a rematch clause in their contract from last year, but Fury’s management mistakenly believed that it had expired, so they moved on to set up a fight with Joshua.
Team Fury should have waited until the arbitrator had finished his work and made his ruling on the case, but they went full steam ahead.
“Wilder declined and had no interest in step-aside money. Y’all dealing with a whole different type motherf***er over here,” said Malik Scott via Michael Benson. “He wants the blood, not that step-aside money. ‘Retribution is upon us’.”
Say goodbye to the Joshua vs. Fury fight, and say hello to Wilder-Fury 3. If Fury loses to Wilder, he can kiss goodbye the $75 million smackers that he would have gotten for the Joshua mega-fight.
This shouldn’t be a big deal for Fury if he’s able to repeat what he did to Wilder last year with his seventh-round stoppage victory. Fury dominated virtually every second of action in that fight against Wilder, who looked totally overmatched.
Since that fight, a lot has changed, starting with Wilder having successful surgery on his right bicep, an injury that he had before his rematch with Fury last year.
Moreover, Fury has gained a lot of weight, and he’s still not lost it all. The Gypsy King doesn’t look like the bulked-up 270-lb football-player-like fighter he was 15 months ago.
Fury’s physique now looks weaker and flabby. Whatever Fury did last year to bulk up for the Wilder fight, he’s going to need to do it for their rematch if he doesn’t want to get poleaxed by the American.
Arum wants to salvage Joshua-Fury
“In an ideal world, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua move ahead for a planned fight over in Saudi Arabia,” said Chris Mannix at SI Boxing.
“That fight is on the five-year line right now, getting close to being completed with a site fee of close to 150 million dollars.
“There’s a lot of money on the table. Because there’s a lot of money on the table, there’s some step aside money potentially for Deontay Wilder.
“So theoretically, Top Rank and Tyson Fury can pay Deontay Wilder somewhere from five million to ten million dollars not to fight, and they could do it with the guarantee that if Fury wins, he can face Deontay Wilder before the end of the year.
“That scenario that was floated to be by Tyson Fury’s promoter Bob Arum on Monday afternoon.
“They keep pushing ahead with the planned fight with Joshua while giving Wilder enough money to satisfy him until the fall,” said Mannix.
It doesn’t look like Arum is going to be able to salvage the Joshua vs. Fury fight from the looks of it.
If what Malik Scott says is true about Wilder having no interest in agreeing to a step aside deal, Fury will need to grin it, bear it, and hope he can beat the former WBC champion in the trilogy match.
At this point, the two heavyweights are 1-1 after two fights. Wilder got robbed of a knockout victory in their first fight, and then Fury beat the injured one-armed Deontay in their rematch last year.
Wilder can spoil Joshua vs. Fury plans
“There is a chance of that because while I just said, Bob Arum said the plan is to give Deontay Wilder step aside money, Bob Arum told Mark Kriegel over at ESPN that the plan is to go ahead with the third fight with Deontay Wilder,” said Mannix.
“There’s a lot of confusion in the aftermath of this ruling [by the arbitrator on Monday]. There was no expectation from Fury’s camp that they would lose.
“There was extreme confidence for months that the arbitrator would rule in their favor, and worst-case scenario, the arbitrator would say they owe Deontay Wilder a little bit of money, and they would pay him to just go away.
“Now everything is in flux. So it is possible at some point this summer we see Tyson Fury take on Deontay Wilder in a third fight, but that’s not ideal for the Fury camp because they know that while Fury dominated Deontay Wilder, he still has that big right hand as an eraser.
“If he lands it and knocks Fury out all the money that was on the table for the Anthony Joshua fight, a huge sum of money, a record-breaking site fee, pay-per-view buys that will break records in the UK will all be gone, all to fight Deontay Wilder, who while there’s decent money on the table to fight him, it is dwarfed by the money that would be there to fight Anthony Joshua,” Mannix said.
Wilder absolutely can spoil Fury’s plans for a fight with Joshua, and there’s not much his promoters at Top Rank can do about if Deontay is unwilling to accept a step aside fee.
Top Rank can try appealing the arbitrator’s decision, but I doubt that’ll work. But if they’re desperate enough to have Fury avoid his contract obligations to Wilder, they might try that path. That might be their only option if Wilder won’t agree to a step aside.
More interest in Joshua-Fury than Fury-Wilder
“I think there’s clearly more interest in Joshua vs. Fury than Wilder vs. Fury 3 in large part because of the way that Joshua-Fury 2 ended,” said Mannix.
“Wilder didn’t just lose. He was savagely knocked out by Tyson Fury. Obviously, because of that, there should be some incentive for Deontay Wilder to look for that step aside fee.
“Wilder hasn’t fought since [last year] in February either. He’s coming off a long layoff.
“Maybe it behooves him to make a comeback fight against somebody like Charles Martin, get his ring rust off, and collect a massive check from Tyson Fury to do it.
“There’s a big risk there because if Anthony Joshua wins [against Fury], he has no deal with Deontay Wilder.
“Anyone in boxing knows that these two [Joshua and Wilder] have been circling each other for years without the ability to get a deal done.
“So it’s an incredibly complicated negotiation that’s going to have to take place in the next two r three weeks to figure out all these moving parts,” Mannix said.
It doesn’t matter if there’s more interest in a Joshua vs. Fury fight than a Fury-Wilder. That’s entirely irrelevant. What matters is that Fury blew it and failed to fight Wilder last year in their rematch, and now he’s stuck having to fight him by September 15th.
If Fury loses to Wilder, he won’t be getting the massive bucks to face Joshua. Fury would have to fight Wilder a fourth time, and if he loses that too, game over. Any hopes of a match between Fury and AJ will end with that loss.
We don’t know how Fury will react to losing to Wilder in their next fight. Yeah, Fury could walk away from a loss and choose to fight Joshua afterward, but would he do that? I doubt it.
Fury has too much pride to walk away from a knockout loss to Wilder without avenging the defeat.