Fury golden ticket in battle of the box
ASky is on the wrong horse with Joshua and BT Sport has, in Fury, a proper sporting superstar
chunky 25 quid, and a delayed ring-walk that made the start time a bleary 4.57am, but this was that rarest of sporting experiences: a pay-per-view boxing occasion that was actually worth the cash.
BT Sport Box Office has Tyson Fury; Sky Sports Box Office has Anthony Joshua. If you had been offered the choice of which you would rather have your money five years ago, it would have been AJ all the way. In 2017, Joshua got up from the canvas to stun Wladimir Klitschko, literally and figuratively, in the 11th round at Wembley in one of the great British sporting performances of the age. It seemed that Joshua and Eddie Hearn had the pay-per-view golden ticket for a generation.
Fury, at that time, was in the depths of despair and nowhere near a ring; he looked more likely to end up on I’m a Celebrity or make a tragic third item for
News at Ten than a major sporting event. And yet it is Fury who is indisputably the main draw in heavyweight boxing now, and surely only complacency or lifestyle could undo him were he to meet Joshua.
You would pay to watch Fury fight – you would pay to watch him do just about anything, such is his charisma, skill and wide, wild streak of genius unpredictability. Hearn’s man is looking rather pedestrian in comparison: the physique of a Greek god, sure, but about as mobile as one of their statues, and as chipped now as anything in a museum. On the combined evidence of their respective fights with Oleksandr Usyk and Deontay Wilder, Joshua would be advised to keep that handsome face as far away from Fury as he possibly can.
How the wheel of sport, and entertainment, turns. The third Fury-wilder event was initially seen as a disappointing chore, a tedious bit of paperwork before the real fun of Fury-joshua, A tough sell. But Sky is on the wrong horse and BT Sport has, in Fury, a proper sporting superstar and modern heavyweight great. Fury delivered absolutely everything in Saturday night’s event. Not only the thrilling win, but hoopla, singing, brilliant quotes and sound bites. Even some salty remarks for his defeated opponent about respect in defeat.
He arrived in sensational style with hype men apparently in tribute to Sparta, a gladiator outfit and (no Patsy Cline this time) AC/DC on the stereo. This was a rock-and-roll night of sporting television, all right.
BT fought the good fight, too. Caroline Pearce, their ringside interviewer, got the snap of the night, posting on social media a picture of the stool that Fury used during the war, one that had been embroidered with Wilder’s puckered-up face, allowing Fury a chance to rest for a few seconds between rounds while Wilder kissed his… well, you get the idea with that one.
David Haye, who divides opinion as a pundit, remains, in my view, an excellent presence. He offered insights into the momentum shifts of the fight itself, he provided the occasional peek behind the curtain by offering, for instance, the nugget that he had some inside information about Wilder having surgery. There was also some discussion, with an element of banter, about him possibly making a comeback: boxing is unusual in that the people analysing it on TV might, or at least conceivably could, be competing next time they pop up on your telly.
You do not really get that with cricket and football; it is hard to see Gary Neville getting his boots back on, or Sir Andrew Strauss dusting off the Gray-nicolls for another tilt at the Aussies.
Haye’s colleague Richie Woodhall, along with Johnny Nelson, Carl Froch and Matthew Macklin, springs from that deep well of former British/irish champions who bring gravitas and insight to the sport of boxing. While the average sports fan could just about imagine and envisage what it might be like to play football or tennis or whatever at a high level, boxing remains so singular, so brutal, so remote. Perhaps it is why the on-screen experts come across, pound-forpound, as the most authoritative in sport. But on an excellent night of entertainment, no question as to the star of the show, nor that BT and Fury’s star burns brightly as Sky’s and Joshua’s wanes.