WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury says he was fully confident of taking down Deontay Wilder after dealing with his feared power for twelve rounds in their December 2018 encounter.
The contest, which saw Fury go down twice and nearly stopped in the twelfth, ended in a controversial twelve round split draw.
In the rematch, it was all Fury. He took the fight to Wilder early on and continued to press the action throughout the contest. Wilder went down twice and was stopped in the seventh when his corner threw in the towel.
There will be a third contest, after Wilder exercised a contractual clause to force the trilogy bout.
When and where the contest takes place will depend on the restrictions in the fall.
"I told everybody who’d listen that I was going to knock Wilder out because something happened, I’d seen something in the first fight," said Fury.
"I knew he couldn’t beat me because if he was ever going to beat me he’d beat he after I’d had three years out of the ring with only two sh-tty comeback fights and he couldn’t do it then, he couldn’t even keep me down when he had me down. So I knew he’d hit me with his best shots and I’d got up from them. I knew I couldn’t be defeated by him.
"It was mental strength, willpower, determination and the balls to just say, ‘right, I’m going to put it straight on you, son. See how you react to that’. I think he was surprised because I attacked him from the first second of the first bell. And I always wanted to give him a bit of payback from that first fight because he put me down twice. And in the second fight I think I put him down three or four times and it was completed the greatest comeback in the history of boxing."