Top Rank’s CEO and boxing legend Bob Arum has been around “the sweet science” for a lot of years now. But even the man who promoted one of the best fighters to ever put a gloves on said that the trilogy fight between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder was the best heavyweight action he has ever seen.
Fury and Wilder produced an all-time classic, both men getting dropped twice before Fury putting the American to sleep with a powerful right hand hook in the eleventh round.
Arum says it’s one of the most exciting heavyweight fights he’s seen since the Thrilla in Manila between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier on October 1, 1975.
“That was a great, great fight and it had all the drama that you could ask for,” said Bob Arum to Fighthype on the Thrilla in Manila between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in the 1970s. “I have never seen a heavyweight fight compared to this one.
“This is the best heavyweight fight I have ever seen. He [Fury] knocked him down the round before [round 3], ‘Hey, we got the fight won.’ Then he [Fury] gets knocked down twice. Yes, I thought the fight was over and he was going to continue on, a carbon copy of the last fight.
“I thought the fight was over after the first knockdown,” said Arum about his belief Fury had the fight won after he dropped Deontay in round 3. “Then the guy [Wilder] knocks him down twice. Not once, twice, then I’m really concerned.
“I saw how Tyson got back to his corner and he wasn’t wobbling or anything, so I was less concerned,” said Arum about Fury being dropped twice in the fourth.
“Then he put a beating on this guy and he was still dangerous. One thing you got to say about Wilder, he’s got a big, big heart. I never thought he had a heart like this.
“He [Fury] finally started listening to his corner and throwing a jab, which he started doing. There is no fighter in any weight class that is in the condition that Fury is in. Fury is in unbelievable condition, unbelievable.
“When Fury said, ‘I’m a fighting man,’ now you know what he’s talking about. He’s a very different human being and he marches to his own drum, so he’ll tell me when he’ll fight again.
“The fight is extremely well. Even without the Brits, look at how many people we put in here,” said Arum about the fans that packed the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas to watch Fury and Wilder.
