It’s fair to say, it was never going to be an easy job selling a third fight between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder. Now, with the contracted three-match postponed until at least October (according to promoting duo Bob Arum and Frank Warren), this due to you know what, it’s entirely possible those fans who did have an urge to see whether or not Wilder could possibly come back with a vengeance will have lost interest by then. Wilder, who was so comprehensively hammered in the second fight last month, is being given virtually no shot against Fury the next time around.
In fact, Warren said that even if the two fought ten years from now, Fury would win. And it does seem as though Fury is so much better than Wilder, in pretty much every department. It’s going to be up to Wilder to shock, surprise and amaze us all by proving this line of thought to be wrong. Can he do it? Most experts doubt it. Wilder was a fine champion, but at age 34 his time has passed. I wish him luck.
Sound familiar? The above words are paraphrased from “Rocky III.” Rocky had to prove his mettle in a rematch with Clubber Lang, which of course, “The Stallion” did. But that was in the movies, and even if Fury is not as scary as Clubber was, Wilder will have his own demons to overcome if he’s to somehow beat the man who so brutally dispatched him a little over a month ago.
And one man who gives Wilder a great big zero of a chance of being able to do it is Dillian Whyte. Whyte still holds a grudge towards Wilder due to how “The Bronze Bomber” never gave him a shot at the WBC belt. Whether this clouds Whyte’s judgment or not is open to debate, but Whyte launched a scathing attack on Wilder when speaking with Sky Sports.
“Yes, it’s ridiculous, considering he lost the first fight,” Whyte said of Wilder and his upcoming third fight with Fury. “I think Fury is better than him in every department. What’s he going to change now that he hasn’t changed in the past 12 to 15 years? Nothing. He can’t throw a jab, he can’t box. His balance is terrible, his neck is too weak and he doesn’t hit as hard as everyone says. You look at his record, he hasn’t really knocked out anyone of note really. Now you know why the coward ran away from me for so long. I would have destroyed him and he knows it.”
Ouch.
While it’s up for argument as far as who would have won a Wilder-Whyte fight, the highly ranked Brit does make some good points. Wilder really has it all to prove in the three-match with Fury – whenever the fight actually happens. The fictitious Balboa somehow changed his style, baffled his toughest-ever foe, and won back the crown. But then he had a great trainer. And that was in the movies.
Now, can Wilder do the same thing, or something like it, in real life? The odds are strongly against it.