If all goes according to plan, Tyson Fury will walk out of Belfast, Northern Ireland not just a winner over Francesco Pianeta, but also the next challenger for Deontay Wilder’s WBC heavyweight title.
According to Mike Coppinger of RingTV, a deal is in place to pit Wilder and Fury in a fight in Las Vegas, provided that Fury defeats Pianeta on the August 18 boxing card from Belfast that is headlined by Carl Frampton vs. Luke Jackson. The fight, for Wilder’s WBC title, will be shown on pay-per-view in the United States with Showtime handling broadcasting duties and it will take place either in November and December.
Wilder, who last fought in March with a TKO win over Luis Ortiz, will be ringside to watch Fury’s fight against Pianeta. Wilder arrived in Northern Ireland earlier in the week and made a surprise appearance at the weigh-ins, eventually confronting Fury himself. The video of the confrontation can be seen below.
Talks of a potential fight between Wilder and Fury started shortly after a fight between Wilder and unified champion Anthony Joshua for September fell through. Fury, who returned to the ring in June after a two-and-a-half year absence from the sport, was recently put back in the WBC rankings, coming in at No. 7 in July and then moving up to No. 5 in the latest heavyweight rankings.
Although Wilder currently has a mandatory challenger in Dominic Breazeale (ranked No. 3 by the WBC), WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman said Wilder’s next fight would be a voluntary defense, meaning the champion is able to defend his title against anyone in the WBC’s top 15 for the champion’s weight and in this case, that includes Fury.
The news does not come as much of a surprise as Stephen Espinoza, head of Showtime Sports, said the two sides were “very close” to reaching a deal and that this would be a pay-per-view fight. This would be Showtime’s first boxing pay-per-view event since the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor event from August 2017.
Fury scored the biggest win of his career back in late 2015 when he defeated Wladimir Klitschko to win the unified Ring Magazine, WBA “super,” WBO, IBF and lineal heavyweight titles. Since then, he has lost all of those titles, except the lineal title, due to a lengthy drug suspension that was ultimately resolved at the end of 2017. Fury got reinstated by the British Boxing Board of Control and had his first boxing fight since the win over Klitschko in June with a win over Sefer Seferi.
