By: Sean Crose
“They bring this woman in from the UK,” said Bob Arum of Fox’ Kate Abdo after a Wednesday press conference to promote Saturday’s Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder heavyweight title match, “and she’s slanting all the press conference to Wilder.” Abdo wanted the two men to face off, but Arum prevented it from happening. “She knew that the understanding was no faceoff,” Arum claimed. “What does she say? Now were going to do a faceoff.” The veteran promoter then went off entirely. “Fuck her and fuck them,” he said. “There was no faceoff and we saved the fight.”
Arum felt that Abdo was in favor of Wilder throughout the proceedings because the reporter works for Fox, which has a deal with Premiere Boxing Champions, which represents Wilder. “There was this broad,” said Arum, “egging them on. Because she’s with Fox, she was totally prejudiced, but Tyson wouldn’t let her get away with it. Who was going to stop anything?” Needless to say, the press conference, like the entire leadup to Saturday’s fight, had its share of bad blood. “After this fight,” Fury said to egg on Wilder, “he’ll be working back at that fast food chain he was working at earlier in his career.” Wilder wasn’t afraid to respond. “Even at my worst time, you still hit like a bitch,” he told Fury. “I had a disloyal trainer.”
After the two had spent some time talking at each other, Abdo tried to put a stop to the sniping and have the fighters stand face to face. Arum then began to scream “no,” to Fury’s obvious confusion. “The chances of something happening,” Arum said afterward, “and upsetting the fight where everybody has worked extraordinarily hard to put it together – the PBC people, ourselves, the fighters – it would have been a tragedy. So why that that risk?”
Wilder and Fury first met in an interesting 2018 bout that saw Fury seemingly on the road to victory when a thunderous Wilder shot put the Englishman on his back. Fury amazingly got back on his feet and finished the fight, earning himself a draw with the hard hitting American. The rematch, just over a year later, was another story, as a far more aggressive Fury dominated Wilder on his way to a round seven stoppage win. Wilder has since blamed many things, including foul play on the part of team Fury, as well as his own team, for his defeat.