FURY WILL BE OUT FOR THE COUNT IN THE 9th
BIG FIGHT VERDICT JEFF Powell
THERE are two big fights in town and nobody knows for sure who is going to win either. Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder stand at a dead heat in the predictions by boxing royalty gathered here to see which of them will thunder to victory tonight and grab the tastiest goodies in the world heavyweight championship cookie jar.
‘Barmy’ Bernie Sanders and ‘Brain-Dead’ Joe Biden are the best of the rag-tag presidential hopefuls from among whom Nevada Democrats will vote today for their choice to take on Donald ‘Bruiser’ Trump in November.
At least when it comes to the Gypsy King and the Bronze Bomber we are guaranteed a result before midnight. That is more than America’s ramshackle electoral system can promise.
Whether there will be anything dubious about the outcome of the slugfest between Fury and Wilder if they go the distance a second time depends on the referee and the three judges, all fellow countrymen of America’s holder of the WBC version of the ring’s marquee title.
Not that either protagonist expects it to go to the scorecards. Fury, at ease with those appointments now he is a star in the US, is forecasting a second-round stoppage out of keeping with his form guide, Wilder a characteristic knockout ‘whenever it comes’.
There is much at stake for both, in addition to the belt and scores of millions of dollars.
Fury says: ‘ This is the biggest fight involving a British boxer in the 18 years since Lennox Lewis beat up Mike Tyson in
Memphis. But Iron Mike was a spent force by then, so when I rip out Wilder’s heart and feed it to him, this will be the most historic victory achieved by a UK heavyweight abroad. Ever.’
Wilder can finally win the hearts of his own people and says: ‘I want us both to be at our best and produce the great fight which, when I win it, will serve my greatness in the minds of the American public.’
The punters are split down the middle. For the first time in most big-fight recollections, the casino sports books here quote both at even money.
With the bookies back home, Wilder has edged into favouritism for the first time in the betting by a wafer-thin 19-20. Fury, who likes being the underdog, has slipped a fraction to 11-10.
This is a classic example of what the Americans call a pick ’em fight. To us, 50-50 or too close to call. As it proved to be in their first encounter 14 months ago when Fury climbed like Lazarus from the floor after a concussing last-round knockdown to retrieve a draw from a fight in which he had controlled many of the rest of the 12 rounds.
Wilder, who holds the highest knockout percentage in heavyweight championship history, with 41 from the 42 wins plus that one draw against Fury on his record, says: ‘Tyson has been carrying in his head for 14 months that brutal knockdown in LA. The knowledge of my punching power preys on the minds of all my rivals.’
To which Fury, even though he was also dropped in the ninth, says: ‘ How does he explain me keeping getting up? He has been living with the worry that he couldn’t finish me off.
‘To tell you the truth, he doesn’t hit that hard. He also knows deep down that he missed his chance of beating me on that night when I’d been out of shape and out of boxing for three years. How’s he going to beat a match-fit
Gypsy King?’ The answer may rest on the scales.
Fury’s decision to change trainers from the technical Ben Davison to the knockout mentality passed down from the late and legendary Kronk maestro Emmanuel Steward to his nephew Javan ‘SugarHill’ Steward was influenced by his father John’s conviction in the first fight he was too light for a 6ft 9in giant.
As they went to the weigh-in late last night, Fury said: ‘I am more comfortable boxing a bit heavier. It will also put more beef into my punches so I get the KO. So I expect to be a stone bigger at just under 19 stone.’
There is evidence of that in a little more padding around the midriff.
Wilder, naturally a lighter heavyweight, even though not much the shorter at 6ft 7in, had also talked of coming heavier to the ring in the MGM Grand Garden Arena but the lean, mean machine physique he revealed a few days earlier belied those words.
At about 15½st expect him to be 3½st the lighter. Never before
have such discrepancies lessened his freakish, scary capacity for demolishing human skyscrapers with arguably the biggest punch of all time.
Fury survived the first fight to claim he had been robbed of the draw by eluding, taunting, frustrating Wilder and clipping him on the run.
As for the 47- stitch cut he sustained as recently as his last interim fight, he dismissed speculation that the danger of having it reopened has drastically reduced his sparring, saying: ‘I’ve done more rounds than ever. I just made sure nothing happened by wearing head-gear, which I don’t like to do.’
Will the lineal champion really live up to his threat of becoming the knockout merchant by risking all in the hitting zone?
‘Absolutely,’ he insists. ‘ Don’t believe it,’ says Wilder. ‘ That would make my job easier. He has pillows for fists which I can ignore while I hit him.’
Mind games or not, this has grown into one of the hardest game’s most fascinating conflicts, if not quite the biggest heavyweight fight since Ali-Frazier I, which Fury believes it to be.
That would exclude such spectaculars as Ali-Frazier III, which was even more brutal and amazing, and the Rumble In The Jungle, in which Ali achieved his phenomenal stoppage of Big George Foreman.
But big it most certainly is and there are parallels with the first Ali-Frazier thriller. Both, like Fury and Wilder, were unbeaten. Ali, like Fury, was coming back from three years of enforced absence from the ring. That historic night in New York was billed as the Fight Of The Century.
Now Wilder- Fury II has the chance to become the Fight Of This Century. Especially if Fury dares to try to outpunch the puncher.
Maybe he will, since he has said: ‘While I don’t have a stamina problem, the longer it goes the more time he has to land that one huge shot.
‘I know I can dominate 98 per cent of the fight and beat him on points, which I know I did first time. But the danger is in the other two per cent of a 12-round fight. So I’m not leaving it to the judges again.’
Those like David Haye, who have experienced the Wilder power in sparring or the ring, counsel Fury that if he is not careful for the full 36 minutes he will pay the price. Contrarily, Wilder, with his knockout record stiff with first-round flattenings, says: ‘One of the things I learned from the first fight was to be more patient. Wait for the knockout to come if needs be.’
Actually, the tapered waist suggests he is going for more speed to catch up with the remarkably mobile Fury. There is also a prospect of him going to the slighter, thicker Fury body more frequently in the hope of slowing him down to set up the knockout punches later.
Now that all is said and done, the perceived wisdom, mine included, is Wilder by KO or Fury by decision. So which is it to be? The heart says Fury, our Redemption Man. The head says Wilder, the American Demolition Man.
Unhappily, history tells us that mind overcomes matter in the square ring. Probably this time at about the ninth round.