Home Boxing News Lou DiBella says postponement of Tyson Fury fight will give Deontay Wilder...

Lou DiBella says postponement of Tyson Fury fight will give Deontay Wilder the edge

Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury. Photo credit: Mikey Williams/Top Rank

Deontay Wilder’s former co-promoter Lou DiBella has spoken out about the late postponement of the 35-year-old American’s third fight against Tyson Fury.

WBC heavyweight champion Fury 30-0-1 (21) withdrew from his first title defence against former champion Wilder 42-1-1 (41) last week after reportedly contracting Covid-19. The bout was scheduled for the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 24.

“This can’t help Fury. It’s probably giving more fuel to the Wilder camp,” said promoter Lou DiBella to SecondsOut. “I’m hoping everyone recoveries quickly and the fight takes place when it’s supposed to, which I’m hearing in October.

“Stuff happens, and cancellations because of this virus are continually being a regular thing.

“A lot of money went into promoting this event and this happened pretty late in the game. In this new world of the virus, it’s not such a big delay.”

With so many dates already locked up with big events, such as the WBC and IBF welterweight title defence of Errol Spence Jr 27-0 (21) against Filipino legend Manny Pacquiao 62-7-2 (39) at the T-Mobile Arena on August 21 and Mexican superstar Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez 56-1-2 (38) expected to fight on September 11, promoter Top Rank had little choice but to push the fight right back, says DiBella.

“You don’t want to compete with Pacquiao and you don’t even want to go within a week of Pacquiao and Spence. You want to separate it out a little bit,” DiBella said.

“You don’t want to counter-program it, and you also want to look for the right date where you don’t have massive competition because the fighters are relying on pay-per-view to get paid.

“[Fury] is a big strong guy and he did have one vaccine, which you would think would give a degree of protection from getting really sick.

“I haven’t heard anything about him being very ill. He should be happy that it’s a couple of months from now because there’s every reason to think you’re going to get the best of both [fighters]. That’s what you want.”

DiBella says Wilder will benefit the most from the delay, despite neither boxer fighting since their second bout in February last year.

“It’s certainly given them more of an edge, they’re pissed off,” said DiBella. “I think [Wilder] was approaching a readiness to fight. He’s not ill and he’s not facing this distraction around his camp. I don’t think it’s going to be a determining factor, but you might think that it helps Wilder a bit.

“When someone does this and doesn’t get vaccinated and a fight gets postponed, it affects an awful a lot of people and an awful lot of corporate entities.

“It also costs money that’s not coming back. All that promotional money, you can’t insure against Covid right now. All that promotional money that was spent leading up to that fight and the time that Fox gave towards promoting it, and ESPN, I guess, to a degree, that’s lost. So there are repercussions.

“I feel more badly towards the undercard fighters, who are relying on that big date. In this Covid environment with vaccines, you can suggest that people do the right thing.

“Go get the vaccine, particularly if you’re looking at a gazillion-dollar payday as a fighter with a limited shelf life – and all fighters have a limited shelf life. But you can’t point fingers in this environment and get angry at people for this virus.”

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