By Norm Frauenheim-
Classics never end. Look it up. They are timeless by definition. So, too, is Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder.
A sure sign of it is in the story of the beautiful brawl. It’s still being told, four days after Fury got up twice, scored three knockdowns and finished Wilder in the eleventh round.
Just four days might as well be four decades on a modern clock accelerated by social media. The public attention span lasts about as long as a tweet these days. Here now, forgotten a blink later.
But we’re still talking about Fury-Wilder, rare for a heavyweight fight or any other bout in a crowded schedule full of baseball playoffs and football. Interest endures, not because there will be a fourth fight. No worries, there won’t be.
But the third fight will continue to reverberate, repeated and re-written, mostly because of the personal drama that continues to unfold.
Unlike the definitive end brought on by Fury’s right hand at 1:10 of the eleventh, there are still more rounds to go in this one. The first of many came from Wilder Thursday.
“We didn’t get the win but a wise man once said the victories are within the lessons,” Wilder said through social media. “I’ve learned that sometimes you have to lose to win. Although, I wanted the win I enjoyed seeing the fans win even more. Hopefully, I proved that I am a true Warrior and a true King in this sport. Hopefully, WE proved that no matter how hard you get hit with trials and tribulations you can always pick yourself up to live and fight again for what you believe in.
“Last but not least I would like to congratulate Tyson Fury for his victory and thank you for the great historical memories that will last forever.”
There was a tone of resignation, if not outright concession, in Wilder’s words. It was far from what he told Fury in the fight’s immediate aftermath. Video shows him saying he didn’t “respect” Fury, who went to his corner. Fury also said he refused to shake hands.
Many in the Twitter mob weren’t happy with Wilder’s message. It didn’t go far enough, they said. “Last but not least” angered many. “First and foremost” apparently should have been the lead.
Some also ripped Wilder for his faith. They were unhappy with his reference to God. Their complaints remind a soldier’s son of something he often heard from his father after he returned from combat in some far-flung hellhole. There are no atheists in a foxhole, he used to say.
Wilder had just been under hellish fire in what these days is called a combat sport. I’m not sure how many of those key-board chicken-hawks have experienced, much less endured, incoming punches from a 6-foot-9 heavyweight named Fury. But, please, give Wilder a break.
From this corner, Wilder’s message is another step in a personal evolution. We’ve watched him – and Fury – grow up in a cruel place. While covering the Beijing Olympics 13 years ago, I remember a wide-eyed kid with a bronze medal. He was just happy to be there.
His emergence, first as a heavyweight contender and then a feared champion, has been both unlikely and unsettling. The happy kid changed. Increasingly, he believed in the infallibility of his one-dimensional power. Then suddenly, his deadly right hand failed him.
Fury got up from it in their first fight and eliminated it in their second. In the third, Fury again got up from it and then delivered some cruel irony, knocking out Wilder with his own right hand. For Wilder, it had to be devastating. His sense of self – the singular power that defined him – was gone.
His identity crisis was evident throughout the long delays before the third bout. He called Fury a cheater. His crazy talk included body bags and legal homicide. He wouldn’t – couldn’t — begin to accept defeat.
Until now.
The nice kid in Beijing is beginning to re-emerge, this time with some of the wisdom that comes with a hard-earned maturity.
He reminds me of George Foreman, the biggest power puncher of his generation. A defining photo of Foreman is of a smiling kid waving an American flag in a bear-paw-sized hand after winning gold at the 1968 Mexico City Games.
Like Wilder, however, Foreman’s fundamental good nature got fractured by Muhammad Ali in a devastating loss, the classic Rumble in the Jungle in the former Zaire almost exactly 47 years ago — Oct. 30, 1974.
Foreman was supposed to win. There were even fears that he would hurt Ali. But Ali won, scoring a stunning eighth-round stoppage. The loss changed Foreman.
“For a couple of months, it was like he was in a trance,’’ said Bill Caplan, Foreman’s publicist then and his friend forever. “I couldn’t talk to him.’’
Foreman even had his own conspiracy theories as a way to explain away the loss. He suggested he had been drugged, alleging that somebody put something in his water bottle.
If that sounds familiar, it is. Wilder alleged the same thing after his loss to Fury in the second fight in February 2020.
But eventually Foreman took it back, got over it.
Eventually, Caplan said, Foreman became Ali’s friend.
He grew up, which is what we are seeing Wilder do.
Foreman, himself, marveled at what he saw in Fury-Wilder.
“I’m just so happy to have lived long enough to see the past come alive again,’’ Foreman said on his YouTube platform from a desk that included a photo of Ali in the background. “It was like something out of the past.’’
Foreman also said it’s time to move on.
“We can quit talking about George Foreman, Muhammad Ali, Jack Johnson,’’ he said.
The graceful humility in those words is a Foreman trademark, there now as a 72-year old man just as surely as they were in his flag-waving gesture 53 years ago.
But I, for one, will never quit talking about Foreman, Ali, Johnson or Joe Frazier or Joe Louis or any of the other heavyweights made great by the classics they won. And lost.
In Fury-Wilder, it’s just nice to have another one, alongside all of them.Attachments area
