Fury vs. Wilder is close. Real close. There isn’t much to say about the build-up other than the normal pre-fight boxing blah blah occurred: people talked a lot; though the laughs were few. Which is strange in view of Fury’s normal love for a stunt. No Batman this time—the only superhero impression to get so far up Klitschko’s nose that some people were saying his frontal lobes had been turned into cheese. You know the rest. And no long and complicated monologues to camera this time. Tyson’s wild and complex diatribes are refreshing, if incoherent, in the scheme of the modern boxing Pressers. Some people have listened to every single minute of Heavyweight boxing Pressers for the last ten years and they report, in private, that they’ve learned nothing at all. Absolutely nothing.

 

But we’re not talking about Nobel Prize winning lectures here. This is Sell, Sell Time and this is P.T. Barnum’s sexiest dream. Pile ‘em high, pour it down the throats of the already-converted. Easy prey. Someone with a Ferrari and access to a screen is instantly saleable to virtually anybody with a broken heart and a jealous streak….and a PPV Buy button.

 

Tyson Fury isn’t the usual saleable type of fighter, but he is honest. And when he says he wants that WBC title it isn’t for kicks. He wants the title because he sees it as his, just as he sees himself as the lineal champ. Now the shark tank is getting busier and competition for chum is becoming fiercer. Wilder, Joshua, Usyk, Whyte, and an upcoming Dubois, all have their eyes on title fights. And that’s without mentioning the stay-hards and on and off drug cheats like Charr, Ortiz, Povetkin, and the men who can surprise anyone on a lucky night, such as Parker, Kownacki, Ruiz and Joyce. All saleable men in some form or another. Tyson knows that he needs to be in the mix to open the doors to riches. For the first time in a long while the big men are drawing in cash. WIlder/Fury 1 drew nearly a million PPV sales in the US and the UK (combined) and illegal streaming figures were close to ten million. Now ITALICthere is an audience. The next few years could see a whole round of good heavyweight title clashes between fighters who matter. Gone indeed are the poor old Klitschko harvesting times.

 

The money for the fight this weekend is mostly for Wilder. Not mine, however. Despite the rumours coming from David Haye that Tyson’s camp has been a poor one, I expect Fury to be slick, tough, and rangy: all the things he is known for and more. Wilder will look for that one enormous right hand, swinging through the air like a whistling firecracker. The usual. Fury will dance and mug and clinch and jab and he’ll frustrate WIlder much like last time. This time, though, it’s rumoured inside the camp that Fury is punching harder, working on that straight right of his. I like the sound of it.

 

Take a chance on the PPV. It’s Vegas, it’s the big men, and we’re entering a golden age in the division. For everything he’s gone through, for his skill, and simply because I know the bloke, I’ve no shame in saying “Come on Tyson!”