Third fight between the pair means Fury’s blockbuster bout against Anthony Joshua will be delayed
Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury will meet for the third time after the American activated his rematch clause despite his comprehensive defeat last month. The championship bout is expected to take place in the USA in July.
The Briton defeated the Alabaman with a dominant seventh round stoppage on February 22 in Las Vegas to claim the World Boxing Council heavyweight crown, and the No 1 position in boxing’s blue riband division. Victory marked one of the greatest comebacks in boxing history, with Fury beating obesity, depression, addictions and poor mental health to reclaim a heavyweight belt previously won when he defeated the great Wladimir Klitschko in 2015.
Fury’s UK and USA promoters, Frank Warren and Bob Arum respectively, confirmed separately that Wilder triggered his contractual right and that the two fighters will meet again this summer, most likely July and probably in Las Vegas.
“Wilder has exercised his right and we have to keep to it, but obviously we would have liked Fury to fight Anthony Joshua, with all the belts on the line, but that fight will have to wait until the autumn,” Warren explained.
Joshua, the WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO champion, is now expected to fight Bulgarian Kubrat Pulev in a mandatory IBF match-up in London in June, with the Tottenham Hotspurs Stadium the favoured location, although Twickenham is another option.
Wilder conceded a five-year reign and his unbeaten record to Fury in the second encounter between the two, with Arum confirming that the event returned pay-per-view numbers of 1.2 million buys in the USA. Champion and challenger are believed to have each earned more than £22 million from the showdown.
Should Fury and Joshua both come through their next tests, Arum said they could meet before the end of the year. Saudi Arabia, where Joshua regained his belts last December in his rematch against Andy Ruiz Jr, has been suggested as the potential venue for probably the richest fight in British boxing history, valued at more than £100 million.
In spite of being stopped and felled twice by Fury in their second encounter, Wilder insisted in a video on his social media that he will re-gather himself and reclaim the title.
“I will rise again. I am strong. I am a king; you can’t take my pride. I am a warrior. I am a king that will never give up. I’m a king that will fight to the death,” he said. “And if anyone doesn’t understand that, they don’t understand what it is to go to war, they don’t understand what it is to fight. I will regain the title, and I will rise like a phoenix from the ashes and regain the title. I’ll see you in a few months, for the war has just begun.”
Elsewhere, in Texas, Britain’s longest-reigning world champion Kal Yafai fell to his first career defeat in losing the WBA world super-flyweight title against four-weight world champion Roman Gonzalez, of Nicaragua.
Gonzalez, considered among the finest in the world, pound for pound, produced a magnificent performance, dominating the bout and drawing Yafai, from Birmingham, into a toe-to-toe fight, creating clever angles and out-timing the Briton.
“Chocolatito”, as the 32-year-old is known, was the aggressor from the second round onwards, finishing the contest with a two-punch combination in the ninth round, the final punch a right hook from which Yafai was unable to recover.
This was Yafai’s first defeat. He had won all 26 of his previous professional contests and had made five defences of the WBA 115lbs title before running into the genius from Managua.
It was also confirmed at the weekend that London 2012 Olympic Games gold medallist Luke Campbell will challenge Javier Fortuna for the vacant World Boxing Council lightweight title on April 17 in Maryland, USA.