- Deontay Wilder's corner throw in the towel in round seven of punishing heavyweight clash
- Tyson Fury outclasses the champion and takes the TKO win
Tyson Fury snatched the WBC heavyweight title away from Deontay Wilder in sensational style at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Saturday night with a comprehensive mauling of the former champion.
Wilder's corner threw in the towel as their desperate fighter came under prolonged punishment from the Englishman.
It was a seventh round TKO in the end but Fury had dominated the undefeated champion from the opening bell, bludgeoning the Alabama-native relentlessly, and perhaps the end should have come sooner with Wilder offering very little in the final rounds of the fight.
Wilder had no answer to Fury's onslaught and his battered face, masked in blood streaming from his ear and his mouth, told the tale of an incredible performance from the still undefeated lineal champion Fury.
The Morecambe man stalked Wilder from the opening bell and proceeded to dominate courtesy of his vastly superior ring craft and punch combinations. Wilder seemed stunned and as early as round two looked bereft of ideas of how to handle Fury.
Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) had vowed to knock out the 31-year-old all week in the build-up to this fight but it appeared he had no Plan B when it became clear the room for his signature overhand right was not going to be afforded by Fury.
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Indeed it was Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs), who the bookmakers felt was most likely to take the title on points, that kept his promise to win by knockout. He dropped Wilder in the third and fifth rounds, and with veteran referee Kenny Bayless keeping a close eye on a clearly dazed Wilder throughout the seventh, he stepped in as Wilder's corner tossed in the towel, their man being totally outclassed.
To his credit, Wilder showed immense bravery in the face of such a battering. Head down, eyes closed and spitting pools of blood in his corner at the end of the fourth round, he appeared to know he had no answer to Fury's dominance. Yet he battled on and was furious as he slowly realised his corner had taken the wise decision to end the punishment.
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"He won on the night," Wilder said afterwards, "but my coach threw in the towel and I was happy to go out on my shield.
"I make no excuses tonight. I just wish my corner would have let me go out on my shield."
Reports suggest Wilder has the option of a June rematch, but it's difficult to see what he could improve on in order to be ready to go again with Fury in five months. First indications were that the American was up for the challenge, however.
"Even the greatest came back " that's just part of it," Wilder said. "This is what big-time boxing is all about. We'll come back even stronger next time around."
Fury was more interested in serenading the Las Vegas crowd following the fight, but he did allow himself a moment to bask in the triumph of his return to the heavyweight division's top table.
"Credit to Deontay Wilder," Fury said. "I hit him with a clean right hand and dropped him and he got back up and battled on to round seven, (but) the king has returned to his throne.
"I told anybody with a pair of ears … I'm a man of my word " I told everybody, I told Deontay Wilder, I told the world, I'm going for a knockout, I'm not going for a points job. Everyone said, 'just stick to your boxing'. We trained for a knockout. We weren't tapping around in that gym. We were knocking a 250lb bag off its hooks every day."
Indeed it was clear from the first bell that Fury was going to go about this challenge in a different way than he did in the pair's first meeting. He felt hard done by the judges that night and was convinced he would need to knock Wilder out in Nevada if he wanted to win.
He immediately scrambled to take the centre of the ring and didn't cede that territory for a moment from then on.
An exquisite opening round from Fury ended with a fine combination that left Wilder bamboozled as he traipsed back to his corner.
Fury kept up the pressure through a quieter second, but it was in the third that he really began to take the fight to the champion. A thudding right hand around the ear took the legs from under Wilder. That shot, perhaps robbing Wilder of some balance, ensured he was boxing on flimsy legs for the remainder of the fight.
Wilder, clearly still unbalanced, was on the canvas again in the fifth when Fury concluded a combination up high with a solid left hook to the body to send Wilder sprawling.
Wilder limped on until the end, which came on the back of another Fury flurry. The Englishman was well ahead on all the scorecards at the denouement.
It was Wilder's first loss, ending a run which included him dispatching 41 opponents by knockout. But with his devastating right hand never a factor, he was made to look extremely average by the classy Fury.
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