<\/p>\n
By Kelefa Sanneh<\/p>\n
If ever there was a good time to spend eighty dollars to watch boxing on TV, the rematch between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury, on Saturday, is it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Of all the products that were advertised during this year\u2019s Super Bowl, perhaps none was more exotic than this one: Wilder Fury II, which despite the name is neither an action-movie sequel nor an aggressively marketed men\u2019s body spray but, instead, a boxing match, with a suggested retail price of about eighty dollars. \u201cWilder\u201d is Deontay Wilder, a heavyweight boxer from Alabama who is one of the most brutal punchers in the history of the sport. \u201cFury\u201d is Tyson Fury, a British heavyweight who is arguably the most charismatic personality in the sport\u2014and, even more arguably, the most accomplished heavyweight boxer in the world.<\/p>\n
Casual fans might have been impressed to see the fighters\u2019 undefeated records on the screen: 42\u20130 for Wilder, 29\u20130 for Fury. More attentive viewers might have noticed that those records were wrong, or at least incomplete. Wilder is actually 42\u20130\u20131, and Fury is 29\u20130\u20131; that last \u201c1\u201d represents their first encounter, in December, 2018, which was an astonishing fight that ended in a draw. This Saturday night, in Las Vegas, they meet again, in the most eagerly anticipated boxing match since Floyd Mayweather, Jr., fought Manny Pacquiao, in 2015. Prize-fighting tends not to play an important role in modern political discourse, but on Wednesday night, at the Democratic debate, Senator Amy Klobuchar made an unexpected reference to Wilder-Fury II. \u201cI was thinking, there\u2019s going to be a boxing rematch on Saturday in Vegas,\u201d she said, \u201cand those guys should go down there.\u201d She was referring to Michael Bloomberg and Senator Bernie Sanders, who were arguing about the tax code. It was a pretty bad joke, but a pretty good sign that lots of people are paying attention to this fight.<\/p>\n
Mayweather vs. Pacquiao was a rather lopsided match-up. By fight time, Mayweather was a -240 favorite, and in one poll, forty-two out of forty-eight experts picked Mayweather to win, as he did, easily. But for Wilder-Fury II, the odds are about even, and the experts are split. Most people would never dream of spending eighty dollars to watch boxing on television, but, if ever there was a good time to contemplate such a thing, this is it. And there may not be many more.<\/p>\n
A big boxing match is both a clash and a collaboration, since both sides must work together to make sure the event occurs. (In boxing, there is no central authority with the power to dictate and organize fights.) The Wilder-Fury pay-per-view broadcast is a joint production of ESPN, which is Fury\u2019s American home, and Fox, which is affiliated with Wilder; Fox also broadcast this year\u2019s Super Bowl, which helps explain the advertisements. And, if you think that pay-per-view seems like a rather outmoded format, you\u2019re not wrong: the practice of charging cable subscribers an extra fee for big fights goes back to 1960\u2014the Floyd Patterson era. The third major modern heavyweight, Anthony Joshua, fights on DAZN, a streaming network based on a subscription model, which aims to make pay-per-view obsolete. (In December, Joshua won a rematch against Andy Ruiz, regaining some of the stature he lost when Ruiz upset him, last June.) The Wilder-Fury fight is, among other things, an economic experiment. More than four million people reportedly bought the American pay-per-view broadcast of Mayweather-Pacquiao. Will millions be tempted, too, by Wilder-Fury? If a fight this appetizing fails to generate an impressive number of buys, that could signal the beginning of the end of the sixty-year relationship between boxing and pay-per-view.<\/p>\n
Wilder\u2019s appeal is not complicated. He has what Max Kellerman, the ESPN personality and boxing analyst, calls \u201cthe single most devastating knockout punch in the history of boxing.\u201d Wilder came to boxing relatively late in life, around the age of twenty, and he has a reputation for throwing the kinds of wild punches that boxers are typically taught to forsake. But he always wins, pretty much always by knockout. (He once won by decision, against Bermane Stiverne, but he later avenged that victory, as it were, with a brutal first-round knockout.) In Wilder\u2019s last fight, against Luis Ortiz, he looked rather mediocre for six rounds, and then he made those six rounds irrelevant in the seventh, when his right fist connected with Ortiz\u2019s forehead, and Ortiz collapsed in a heap. \u201cFighters have to be perfect for twelve rounds,\u201d Wilder likes to say. \u201cI only have to be perfect for two seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Compared to Wilder, Fury is more skilled but less spectacular. He became a heavyweight champion in 2015 with an ungainly but nevertheless impressive victory against Wladimir Klitschko, who for years seemed unbeatable. Then he disappeared for some time; when he returned, in 2018, he faced a pair of lower-level opponents before fighting Wilder, whom he almost beat, and who almost beat him. As the twelfth round began, most observers thought that Fury was beating Wilder on points. But, in that round, Wilder found his two perfect seconds: he landed a straight right and then a left hook, which put Fury flat on his back; the fight seemed to be over. But Fury did something that no one could reasonably have expected him to do: he got up and finished the fight, earning a draw. (Fury has no memory of being knocked down. \u201cI remember opening me eyes, round about four seconds,\u201d he recalled, in a recent video interview. \u201cI thought, \u2018Shit. Get up!\u2019 \u201d) No matter what happens on Saturday night, or in the years to come, that is the image that will doubtless define Fury\u2019s career: a beaten man, somehow deciding to become unbeaten.<\/p>\n
Bob Arum is the American boxing veteran who is one of Fury\u2019s promoters, and he likes to describe his fighters with superlatives. \u201cTyson Fury is the most articulate boxer that I\u2019ve come across since Ali,\u201d Arum recently said\u2014referring, of course, to Muhammad Ali, a former client of his. \u201cMost articulate\u201d might seem like faint praise for a boxer, but it is not: Fury is an unusually compelling figure. Not long ago, he was interviewed by the former boxer Andre Ward, who hosts a show called \u201cUnguarded\u201d on ESPN+, a streaming network. Ward asked Fury about the years after the Klitschko victory, when Fury was idle and, from all accounts, often drunk. Fury talked about his lifelong struggle with depression and anxiety. \u201cGoing into that Klitschko fight, I was afraid of winning,\u201d he said. \u201cI knew I was going to win, but I was afraid of it, because I knew that I wouldn\u2019t have a goal anymore, and there was nothing to pull me out of that darkness. And I was right.\u201d He said that the darkness only subsided when he started fighting again.<\/p>\n
Not long ago, Fury was portrayed in the British press as a strange and possibly malevolent character. He suggested to The Mail on Sunday that the legalization of homosexuality was a sign of the apocalypse. (The newspaper denounced his \u201cvile homophobic slurs.\u201d) Curious sports fans learned, too, about his father, John, a former bare-knuckle fighter, who was jailed for \u201cgouging out a man\u2019s eye in a brawl,\u201d as one newspaper put it. But, in the years since his hiatus, Fury has come to seem inspirational, instead. This month, the British network ITV has been broadcasting a fascinating documentary series called \u201cTyson Fury: The Gypsy King,\u201d which suggests that Fury could have a lucrative future, if he wants one, in reality television.<\/p>\n
In the documentary, John Fury, now freed, is blustery but charming. He talks about how all Fury men are fighters, and about how he decided to give his son, born premature, a fighter\u2019s name. (Fury was born in 1988, about seven weeks after Mike Tyson\u2019s first-round knockout of Michael Spinks.) As for the eye-gouging, John Fury maintains, confidently if not dispositively, that it was more like a misunderstanding: \u201cJust a disagreement between travelling people what went wrong.\u201d He shows the viewers a painting of a traditional wagon and encampment, with men around a fire. \u201cThis is how we\u2019d used to live, a hundred years ago,\u201d he says. \u201cFree as birds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nowadays, Tyson Fury lives in Morecambe, a seaside town in Lancashire that is not known for glamour. Cameras capture him taking delivery of a horse-drawn wagon, like the one in the painting, and then deciding to be his own horse. He tows the wagon down the street, shouting, \u201cRocky Balboa has nothing on the Gypsy King!\u201d Inside his house, we meet his wife, Paris, and their five children, one of whom won\u2019t stop climbing up the window, thereby earning himself a lecture. Fury says, \u201cYou know why we don\u2019t do that? Because Dad\u2019s had to get his brains knocked out to get this house. Got no more brains to knock out, me boy.\u201d Then he smiles and holds up his enormous palm, so the boy can practice. \u201cBig punch,\u201d Fury says. \u201cPunch it\u2014punch, not slap!\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of what makes Fury so watchable is the complicated relationship between his well-being and his profession. He says that during his boxing hiatus, he came close to committing suicide; he stopped himself by thinking about his family. His wife, Paris, is fond but stressed out: she gets anxious when he has a fight coming up, and anxious, too, when he doesn\u2019t. She says, \u201cThat\u2019s when I start thinking, like, \u2018Where are we at, here? Are we slipping back into a low point?\u2019 \u201d Fury seems to view boxing as a form of therapy, though of course boxing is far too dangerous and damaging to be considered therapeutic. And, when you consider the awesome power of Wilder\u2019s right hand, Fury\u2019s chosen path might seem less like self-medication and more like self-destruction.<\/p>\n
Of course, Fury is confident that he will be able to avoid Wilder\u2019s right hand on Saturday night\u2014avoid it or else, once more, withstand it. Like all the most captivating boxers, Fury has a fighting style that seems to reflect his personality: stubborn, and surprisingly crafty. He found a way to beat Klitschko, and may have deserved to beat Wilder; in that sense, neither Wilder nor Anthony Joshua can match Fury\u2019s record of achievement. Informed observers disagree about which of the two is more likely to have learned something useful from the first encounter, or lost something crucial in it. It is possible that the fight will be ugly and relatively uneventful, all artful feints and tangled limbs\u2014a Fury victory, by decision. It is possible that the fight will end quickly and brutally\u2014a Wilder victory, by knockout. In fact, neither scenario is unlikely. A great puncher versus a great talker doesn\u2019t seem like a fair fight. But this one is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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