2019 started with a fairly clear heavyweight picture.
There were three guys.
Anthony Joshua, Deontay Wilder, and Tyson Fury set apart from their peers. Rank them in whatever order one wanted and it all still came back to those three. They were unbeaten, all claiming to be the true king of the class, with only each other to threaten them.
That was the thinking anyways.
Anthony Joshua (22-1, 21 KO) crossed the Atlantic with three alphabet belts (WBA/IBF/WBO) in June. He left with less luggage and a headache after seven rounds. Only 30, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist is headed to Saudi on December 7th to try to reclaim his belts and his stake near the top of the class from an Andy Ruiz (33-1, 22 KO) who entered on the fringes of contention.
Fury (29-0-1, 20 KO), whose claim to the lineal crown lent itself to a drinking game while watching his first two ESPN appearances, opted to play the waiting game. More observers than not seemed to agree he’d won enough rounds to merit victory against Wilder (41-0-1, 40 KO) last December. It was a reminder of how good the man who unseated Wladimir Klitschko in 2015 can be. An immediate rematch was on the table.
Fury’s deal with Top Rank meant other plans with a likely eye toward further enriching chapter two with Wilder. Right now, the plan seems ready to pay off. Wilder-Fury II is allegedly contracted for the first half of next year.
It almost got derailed.
Unheralded Otto Wallin gave Fury more than expected and opened a cut that came perilously close to ending the fight. Almost 50 stitches were needed to close the wound. A little different luck with doctors or officials and it could have been Wallin = lineal = take a shot.
That didn’t happen.
Is there another hiccup, or at least another moment of high drama, coming this Saturday (Fox PPV, 9 PM EST)?
One fight prior to scoring a pair of late knockdowns to save his WBC belt against Fury, Wilder picked up the most significant win of his career to date. Matched with undefeated Cuban Luis Ortiz, Wilder shook off a shaky technical start to score a fifth round knockdown. Wilder then survived an assault in the seventh round with ample potential to separate him from his senses. Making it more impressive, it came against a foe who has twice failed tests in the past for PEDs, the second of them delaying the Wilder showdown for a time. Wilder finally put Ortiz away but he earned every bit of it.
Before he gets back to Fury, Wilder is tempting fate with the other available resumption of hostilities. Conventional wisdom says the 40-year old Ortiz (31-1, 26 KO) is unlikely to find an even deeper well to draw on more than a year after their first fight. Wilder seems to have settled into his style and is fighting with more confidence than ever.
Wilder always knew he could punch. Now Wilder knows he can catch, he can recover, and he can summon lightning against the best of his division no matter the round. He’ll never be a poster child for technical mastery but, at heavyweight, his attributes more than compensate. Being faster, hitting harder, and having the tank to go all night count for a lot.
And yet, it gives pause to see photos of a seemingly slimmed down Ortiz who has nothing to lose. It would be a mistake to write him off.
Ortiz shouldn’t win.
It doesn’t mean he won’t.
Fans have already seen one perfect moment slip away. Prior to Joshua’s unification win over Joseph Parker, he and Wilder were more than undefeated. They also could claim to have stopped every man they’d ever been in a ring with after Wilder knocked out the only man to take him the route, Bermane Stiverne, in a rematch.
It would have been an easy sell with a special hook. We’ve had memorable title clashes between undefeated heavyweights. We’d never had one with two such immaculate knockout marks. We might never see the chance again and it didn’t come to fruition when it briefly arose.
The perfect hasn’t been the enemy of the good. We got Wilder against Ortiz and Fury. We got Ruiz’s upset of Joshua.
It’s made a fuller landscape with more possibilities. The landscape is still no substitute for the big money fights fans set their hearts on. Fury-Wilder II is just a fight away, right?
But what happens if it’s not? If Ortiz wins, it opens a whole different realm of the possible. For Fury, it could be an absolute disaster. An Ortiz win could lead to a third fight with Wilder. If an Ortiz win is quickly followed by a repeat from Ruiz, it could also lead to something Ortiz spoke to this week.
Ortiz, Wilder, and Ruiz all fight under the PBC umbrella complete with the US network air microphone of Fox Sports. If Ortiz and Ruiz win, it could set the stage for an all-Latino battle for the four major heavyweight titles. That’s a potential economic bonanza. Wilder would be waiting in the wings. The belts might not all stay together long but the factions aligned with DAZN and ESPN would quickly find themselves scrambling to find their way back into the center of the heavyweight mix.
Fury-Joshua would still be big money, especially in the UK, if it emerged as a consolation prize. It wouldn’t be where both players find themselves even now. Fury would probably have to be kicking himself for not going to the Wilder rematch when it was there to be made.
Maybe things will go back to the way they were and 2019 will end as it began: Fury, Wilder, Joshua and everyone else.
The maybe lends this Saturday a little something extra.
Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com