WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder 40-0 (39) says a proposed fight against lineal heavyweight champion Tyson Fury is 26-0 (19) much closer than a fight with unified heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua 21-0 (20) ever was.
Just months after the very public negotiations for a Joshua-Wilder fight fell through, it was revealed this week that Frank Warren is in advanced discussions with Wilder’s team about a fight against Fury in Brooklyn, New York before the end of the calendar year.
“We’re very, very close,” Wilder told The Ring magazine. “Very, very close. Closer than Joshua and me could ever get in a lifetime. It’s definitely gonna happen, there’s no doubt. There’s just a little more work to be done.
“Me and Fury, we talked with each other back and forth; I think he’s a great guy, we have a relationship together, and my team has a relationship with his team.
“This is going to be better than Joshua when it all boils down to it… and we know Tyson Fury, in many eyes, is still the champ, he hasn’t been defeated. He’s still undefeated. He’s still the lineal champion.
“Once I knock him off, I become the man who beat the man.”
Before Fury, 29, can entertain the idea of a fight with Wilder he must first get past Italy’s Francesco Pianata, who he will face on the undercard of the WBO interim featherweight title fight between Carl Frampton and Luke Jackson at Windsor Park in Belfast, Northern Ireland on August 18.
“He’s a guy that’s ready to go, he’s seen what’s been happening to me with this whole situation and he’s disgusted because Joshua is British as well and they see he didn’t want to fight,” said Wilder.
“So he’s being a man, stepping into my backyard and doing something their other so-called champion wouldn’t do, so mad respect from me.”
The 32-year-old Wilder was last in action in March when he stopped Luis Ortiz in the 10th round of a fight he was trailing by a point at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
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