By Norm Frauenheim-
The hyperbole is already underway. Insults, expletives and exaggerations were delivered, exchanged and countered this week in downtown Los Angeles, just across the street from where Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury fought to a controversial draw more than 13 months ago at Staples Center.
More words, a lot more, are inevitable throughout the five-plus weeks before the rematch on Feb. 22 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand. It’s show biz, entertaining and redundant all at once.
But it’s also boxing, unpredictable on any scale but never more so than at heavyweight. That unpredictability, of course, is a double-edged dynamic. Dangerous and dramatic. It can end faster than an accident, a violent collision created more by power than skill.
The Fury-Wilder sequel figures to get more interesting as the opening bell gets closer, mostly because both like the bully pulpit.
Wilder is over-the-top noisy. Bomb Squad, he screams at a window-rattling volume.
Fury is quick-witted. Jokes are as much a part of the Fury skillset as the jab.
Both are profane.
If you’re scoring the early rounds of press conferences, these two are exactly where they were after 12 rounds at Staples. It’s a draw, Wilder scoring with energy and Fury scoring with stinging counters. From this corner, the guess is that the exchange will continue without either getting much of a psychological edge before the first punch.
A fight of many words and promotional angles, however, might hang on a thread. Forty-seven of them, to be exact. That’s how many surgical threads Fury needed to sew up a wound above Fury’s right eye after Otto Wallin cut him during a Fury victory by decision on Sept. 14 at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena.
The stitches are gone, removed just a few weeks after the bloody bout. But a question remains about whether the wound has healed enough to withstand a punch, or punches, delivered with Wilder’s kind of power.
The scar is evident.
For Wilder, it’s a target.
For Fury, it’s a risk.
Fury conceded the risk when asked about the scar this week at LA Live. He said he would be careful not to rupture it in sparring at his Las Vegas’ training camp.
“If I’m going to get cut, it’s going to be in the fight,’’ Fury said.
He was also asked how it felt when a punch landed on the scar. Fury made it sound as though he would not take any test blows on the scarred tissue.
“I can’t risk it,’’ he said.
Neither Fury nor Wilder wants a postponement. Nobody does, especially the promoters and networks, ESPN and Fox, which have joined together in rare cooperation for a pay-per-view telecast expected to do big business.
For Wilder, news of Fury’s caution must be welcome. Wilder is also happy that the Sept. 14 fight wasn’t stopped because of blood that poured down the right side of Fury’s face and into his eye. In just about any other fight, Wilder believes it would have been stopped. But the prospect of a rich rematch made this one different. The stakes were big enough, Wilder said, to let it go on.
It went on — and on – leaving Wilder with an opportunity to finish the bloody job. Maybe, that’s why he’s so confident. In a fight full of unpredictable factors, one thing is certain: Wilder won’t exercise Fury’s caution. He’ll go after that scar, targeting it early and often, in a simple tactic that might say it all.
