By Olu Allen
Tyson Fury is one of the members of his training camp that tested positive for COVID-19, and his July 24th trilogy fight against Deontay Wilder will now be postponed. Interestingly, Fury, was vaccinated, but he’d only been given one shot. For some reason, Fury never got the second dose that he needed. In addition to Fury testing positive for COVID-19, 3 others on his training camp also tested positive.
Wilder and his team are furious, as they’ve been training hard to redeem Wilder’s image. Even Wilder’s partners won’t be pleased. All that work they did is for nothing. They’re going to want to see documentation showing that Fury really does have COVID-19.
Top Rank still needs to make it official about Fury’s positive test and the postponement to the Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) third fight. Earlier on Thursday, Wilder’s trainer Malik Scott expressed skepticism about the news of the positive tests for Fury’s camp, and he said Deontay would continue to train.
Last June, it was another Top Rank fighter, undisputed lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez that tested positive for the virus, which wiped out his title defense against George Kambosos Jr. Teofimo still hasn’t recovered. There’s no date for the rescheduling of that fight.
One will wonder if Bob Arum is speaking with all his fighters to make sure they’ve been fully vaccinated before he goes through the hard work of scheduling fights for them. If Arum isn’t aware of who in his team has been vaccinated, then why will he be investing that much?
There is being some conspiracy theory however going on since the news of Tyson’s test. I hate to say it, but if Fury was having difficulties dealing with the two young guns, who were his sparring partners in Jared Anderson and Efe Ajagba, it’s quite possible he would choose to delay the fight. We don’t know. If Ajagba hurt Fury repeatedly in camp or Jared did, it would be a good reason to come up with an excuse to delay the Wilder trilogy.
Another person who doesn’t believe the COVID excuse is the matchroom promoter. Eddie Hearn is suspicious about the true reasons why the Tyson Fury vs. Deontay Wilder 3 fight is being postponed from July 24th to October 9th. According to Hearn, he predicted the Fury-Wilder fight wouldn’t happen on July 24th.
Somehow, Hearn knew the fight wouldn’t happen on July 24th, and now he suspects it WON’T happen in October either. If Eddie is right, the fight could keep getting pushed down the road.
If the Fury vs. Wilder III fight needs a solid year of postponements for it to take place finally, there might be some interest by 2022. Hearn wants Dillian White to fill in for July 24th. Hearn states that Dillian Whyte is ready to fill in as a replacement opponent for Deontay Wilder to fight on July 24th after Tyson Fury was forced to pull out due to COVID-19.
None of this makes sense. Whyte has nothing to gain by fighting Wilder and vice versa. What this appears is that Hearn is using Fury’s illness as a way of getting some cheap publicity ploy for Whyte by saying that he’s ready to step in and face Wilder on July 24th.
Dillian isn’t going to risk losing his WBC mandatory status again for the second year in a row. He was knocked out by Alexander Povetkin in the fifth-round last year at the Matchroom Fight Camp.
Of course, it would help if the World Boxing Council Stripped Fury and gave him the ‘Champions in Recess’ tag so that Wilder can get on with his career instead of waiting endlessly for him to convalesce
Hearn states that ticket sales weren’t going well for the trilogy match between the two heavyweights, and he sees it as odd that we’re all suddenly hearing Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) has got COVID-19, as well as some of his team.
While Hearn does believe that someone in Fury’s team has COVID-19, he doesn’t know what to think. After his dealings with his recent dealings with Team Fury, he doesn’t know what to believe. Obviously, not a good sign that Fury is getting COVID-19 while the ticket sales are going poorly. Is that just a coincidence?
