According to Dan Rafael of espn.com, Tyson Fury will pass on an immediate rematch with WBC Heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder.
The WBC, which sanctions the belt held by Wilder, set a Wednesday night deadline to hear from the camps on how they planned to proceed with the rematch it had ordered.
On Tuesday, the answer came: Fury decided not to fight Wilder next and will instead fight an opponent to be determined in May or June on ESPN+. Fury still hopes to face Wilder again before the end of the year.
“We’ve spoken to Tyson and he has made the decision to go forward with another fight and to address a Wilder rematch after that,” Top Ranks’s Todd duBoef wrote in the email, which was copied to Fury and obtained by ESPN. “We all appreciate the WBC and the tremendous role it has played in Tyson’s career and hope the WBC will remain involved.”
“The WBC has received the official position from both sides regarding the Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury rematch,” Sulaiman wrote in the email, which was also obtained by ESPN. “While Deontay Wilder confirmed that his only interest was to honor the WBC mandate for a rematch against Tyson Fury, Tyson Fury has confirmed that he would take a fight against a different opponent in his immediate future, hoping that after such, a rematch with Wilder can be considered. Consequently, the WBC is hereby cancelling the Wilder vs. Fury rematch mandate and process. We wish the best of luck to both fighters.”
“It’s obvious that Fury doesn’t want to fight us next,” Wilder manager, Shelly Finkel said. “Hopefully, we will get the next fight after that. So, in the meantime, we will do our own fight. We wanted to fight Fury next. We had no interest in another fight first. The proposal Top Rank sent was for a fight first and there’s no reason we can’t do our own fight if we’re not fighting Fury next.
Everything that we heard from Tyson Fury was that he wanted to fight Deontay next and we were willing to do that. Fury wasn’t.”
Finkel said Wilder’s next fight will be figured out in the coming days.
“He will fight in May and we will announce it shortly,” he said. “May 18 is our preference. We will know Friday or Monday and then we will announce his next plan.”
