By Jeff Aronow: Tyson Fury is one of the members of his training camp that tested positive for COVID-19, and his July 24th trilogy fight against Deontay Wilder will now be postponed. Dan Rafael is reporting the bad news for WBC heavyweight champion Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs).
Interestingly, Fury, 32, was vaccinated, but he’d only been given one shot. For some reason, Fury never got the second dose that he needed. In addition to Fury testing positive for COVID-19, 3 others on his training camp also tested positive.
Needless to say, Wilder and his team will be furious, as they’ve been training hard all these months. Even Wilder’s partners won’t be pleased. All that work they did is for nothing. They’re going to want to see documentation showing that Fury really does have COVID-19.
Top Rank still needs to make it official about Fury’s positive test and the postponement to the Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) third fight. Earlier on Thursday, Wilder’s trainer Malik Scott expressed skepticism about the news of the positive tests for Fury’s camp, and he said Deontay would continue to train.
Unfortunately, the news of Fury’s positive test changes everything, making it necessary for Wilder to grind his training camp to a halt. We don’t know how long it’ll take for Fury to return to health. Depending on how bad this case is, it could take months.
BREAKING: Per source, Tyson Fury was one of the people in his camp who tested positive for Covid-19 and the fight with Wilder is postponed. New date TBA. I’ve been told Fury got one vaccine dose but never got the 2nd. At least 3 others in camp also positive. #boxing #FuryWilder3
— Dan Rafael (@DanRafael1) July 8, 2021
For Bob Arum of Top Rank, this is the second big star in his company that has tested positive for COVID-19.
Last June, undisputed lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez tested positive for the virus, which wiped out his title defense against George Kambosos Jr. Teofimo still hasn’t recovered. There’s no date for the rescheduling of that fight..
You got to wonder if Arum is speaking with all his fighters to make sure they’ve been fully vaccinated before he goes through the hard work of scheduling fights for them. If Arum isn’t aware of who in his team has been vaccinated, what’s the point of scheduling fights for them?
You can argue that Arum should make sure he sees documentation for vaccination records for his fighters before he schedules fights because it’s a waste of time and money.
“We continue to monitor the health status of Tyson and his team, and the status of the event has not changed to date,” said Top Rank in a statement on Thursday.
Wilder will assume the worst
For Wilder, he’s likely to see this as a case of Fury wanting to slide out of the fight for whatever reason. Wilder will surely assume the worst, that Fury wasn’t ready to fight him on July 24th and that he needed more time.
It’s quite possible that Fury wasn’t ready. You hate to say it, but if Fury was having difficulties dealing with the two young guns he was using as his sparring partners in Jared Anderson and Efe Ajagba, it’s quite possible he would choose to delay the fight.
We don’t know. If Ajagba hurt Fury repeatedly in camp or Jared did, it would be a good reason to come up with an excuse to delay the Wilder trilogy.
The last thing Fury needs are to go up against a big puncher like Wilder after getting repeatedly hurt during training camp by Anderson or Ajagba.
It wouldn’t surprise this writer at all if Fury was having problems with his sparring and decided that he wasn’t prepared to deal with Wilder’s heavy shots on July 24th. Fury wouldn’t be the first fighter that had the stuffing knocked out of him during training camp.
Those training camps are grueling affairs, much worse than the actual fights in some cases.
If that is the true reason for Fury needing more time, he needs to get less dangerous sparring partners to help him get ready for the rescheduled fight. It’s no use if Fury is getting knocked out or hurt by guys that are every bit as dangerous as Wilder during camp.
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