Tyson Fury remains on top of the boxing world. On Saturday night, Fury defeated Deontay Wilder via knockout in the 11th round to retain the WBC heavyweight championship. The fight, which took place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, featured five knockdowns, with Wilder going down three times while Fury went down twice. The final scorecard showed Fury ahead of Wilder, 95-92, 94-92 and 95-91.
“It was a great fight tonight,” Fury said after the fight. “It was worthy of any trilogy in the history of the sport. Wilder’s a tough fighter. … I always said I’m the best in the world and he’s second-best.” This was the third battle between Fury and Wilder. The first match was in December 2018 and the bout ended in a draw. The second bout was in February 2020 and Fury defeated Wilder via TKO in the seventh round when his assistant trainer Mark Breland threw in the towel. Wilder fired Breland and exercised his rematch clause.
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“He caught me twice in the fourth round, but I was never thinking, ‘Oh, this is over,’” Fury said. “He shook me, put me down, but that’s boxing, and that’s life as well. It’s not how many times you get knocked down. You’ve got to keep fighting and keep moving forward.”
Fury vs. Wilder 3 was originally set to happen last summer but was pushed back due to COVID-19 concerns. Fury has yet to lose a match, and Wilder’s only two losses are against Fury. Both fighters left everything in the ring, but when it was all said and done, Wilder could not withstand the blows from Fury in the later rounds.
“I haven’t seen the actual knockout tonight, but I felt it,” Fury said. “I hit him with a solid, crunching right hook to the temple, and shots like that, they end careers. He definitely took some punishment, so we’ll see what he can do in the future.” With the Fury-Wilder war now over, the question is what’s next for Fury? One interesting matchup could be Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk who is unified WBA (Super), IBF, WBO and IBO heavyweight champion. Usyk won the titles in September by beating Anthony Joshua via unanimous decision.
