By: John “Gutterdandy” Walker
WBC World Heavyweight Champion Tyson Fury of the UK has hit back at the consistent circulating rumors regarding his readiness to defend the belt against the man he took it from, Deontay Wilder of the USA, this coming Saturday night in Las Vegas.
Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) has been dogged by gossip — that has only grown louder as the fight approaches — to the effect that he has not prepared properly for his first-ever title defense. The final fight of a trilogy with Wilder comes after Covid-19 delays and the scrapping of a proposed “megafight” with now former unified champ Anthony Joshua that was close to becoming reality.
Among those spreading these rumors has notably been Matchroom Boxing head honcho Eddie Hearn, who said in a recent interview that, “I just don’t think [Fury[ is in the kind of condition he was for the second fight” with Wilder.
“He had the first fight fall through with COVID and he’s been flying backwards and forwards. I just don’t think he’s had the ideal preparation at all,” Hearn continued.
While Hearn said he thought Fury would win the third meeting between the two men, he also stoked doubts by saying that this supposed lack of preparation on Fury’s part would mean that the powerful
American might take advantage of a lapse of concentration on the part of his British opponent.
“Is [Fury] ready to beat Deontay Wilder?” Hearn asked rhetorically.
“Probably,” Hearn continued, “but the problem is, when you fight Wilder, as Luis Ortiz found out, you can just win every single round, and if you switch off for a nanosecond, the fight is over. So that’s the only reason this fight is intriguing.”
Likewise, former British cruiserweight and heavyweight champion David Haye has also been stoking the “Fury’s not ready” rumor mill, telling talkSPORT that, “I’ve seen Tyson Fury not preparing as he did the second time ’round [against Wilder].”
“Maybe there’s some overconfidence going into this fight.” Haye–who is himself angling for a comeback fight against Fury–excitedly continued. “Maybe he’s so supremely confident from the second fight that [Fury] believes he’s going to roll into this third fight and it’s going to be a home run straight away.”
Fury has now hit back at the rumors swirling around him, from Hearn, Haye, and others, attributing the gossip to his intentional lack of a social media presence as he prepared for the upcoming fight with Wilder.
The rumors, Fury recently told Steve Bunce of BT Sport, “are because I’ve been off social media for so long.”
Noting that, in order to focus, he had banned those in his camp from posting footage of his training camp on various websites, Fury explained that “when you’re not on social media, all of a sudden you’ve gone on a mad bender! Because, the world is controlled by social media, or so it seems.”
As for the culprits responsible for spreading such blasphemous rumors about him, Fury was direct.
“It’s mainly my rivals whose talk this is,” a bemused Fury told Bunce.
“Now I seen Eddie Hearn said I’m not ready and I’m not focused, but, wouldn’t you think he’d shut up now that his man [Anthony Joshua] has been beaten again?”
Hearn, Fury explained, “has no relevance here in Las Vegas, for me, talking about me. Why does it matter to him what I’m doing, I don’t get involved in his business at all. I don’t care what [Hearn and Joshua] do, it’s none of my concern.”
Tyson Fury is, however, ready to get involved in at least one aspect of Hearn’s business. He has offered to train Matchroom heavyweight and former champ Joshua personally–at no cost –with the guarantee that his on-again, off-again opponent A.J. will win a rematch with new unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk of Ukraine.
“If I trained Joshua [for the rematch], he’d definitely beat Oleksandr Usyk,” Fury opined, apparently in earnest.
“And I would be open to doing it. I’ll do it for free because I don’t need the money. I guarantee [Joshua] would beat him!”
No doubt this “generous” offer from the WBC heavyweight champ was also meant as a sly shot at Joshua’s now widely criticized approach for his latest, disastrous outing: a unanimous decision loss against the former unified cruiserweight king Usyk.