Tragedies of an Era (Era of Fury)

True and what has been revealed over time is AJ was the one willing to fight the others but Wilder ducked him and Fury avoided and is now ducking him.

 

I hate to say this but Fury is ducking AJ ATM.

As for Wilder, in 2018 he wanted 50-50 which IMO was reasonable, but AJ wanted 60-40 in his favour, also AJ's America event in fighting Ruiz was a total disaster, plus Wilder drawing against Fury didn't help.

Marinating fights backfire too much, Bowe V Lewis a great example of this.

 

It’s interesting people talk about the era of 2015-2022 (pre-Usyk) as a trio - Fury, Wilder and AJ - but Wilder was never above Fury in 8 years of Ring magazine rankings, and AJ was only above Fury in 1 year (2018).

AJ being above Wilder in 4 out of 8 years, and Wilder being above AJ in the other 4 years, makes perfect sense as in their primes it was close to a 50/50 pick’em fight, AJ having better technical skills but Wilder being more explosive and likely to land an early KO blow.

Ring magazine says Fury > AJ = Wilder.

 

Its very hard to understand Fury's career. How can he dominate Chisora and Whyte while getting dominated by Usyk, practically losing to Ngannou and going life and death with Otto Wallin?

Probably easiest to interpret his career as him never really having been that good to begin with. The Wallin performance has to be written up to mental health issues and the Ngannou and Usyk performances as a his abnormally large body having deteriorated quickly towards the end of his career, similar to other big men such as Valuev.

As for getting a decision vs Wlad and beating Wilder those things are really not that significant, Wlad was by that time a 4 time ko victim and Wilder is someone who looked horrible lots of times before losing to Fury and has not accomplished anything after those losses.

 

I honestly don't think Wilder matters. His best wins are Stiverne 1 and the Ortiz fights. He literally has the record of a high-end fringe contender...not even on par with Derrick Chisora at this point.

 

Wilder admitted and bragged about turning down obscene amounts of money from Joshua to fight AJ, and put it on Youtube, thinking it somehow helped his case. In addition to being a can-crusher, he's not terribly bright.

 

Fury is absolutely ducking AJ and I don’t even get why. Would be a perfect cash out fight. They’d sell out Wembley, do big PPV numbers, and Fury would be heavily favored. They could each probably add another $50mil to their bank accounts. Why not do it?

Fury just lost twice, but he looked good in both fights. Usyk was just better. AJ looked terrible against Dubois. I don’t see this fight as much of a risk to Fury if he trains like he did for Usyk.

unless it’s a health concern? AJ ain’t exactly some feather fist.

 

Cmon, you can’t compare Joshua, Wilder an Fury with Ali, Frazier an Foreman.

 

I'm not sure why 50/50 was reasonable, to be honest.

Joshua was the bigger draw by an astronomical distance - plus he would've been bringing 3 belts to Wilder's 1 belt.

I think a lot of people forget just how poorly Wilder sold before Fury.

By any metric of how you'd divide the cash, Joshua should've got more... And, IMHO at least, 60/40 was probably more than Wilder was really worth too (and again IMHO, all of this shows how much keener Joshua was to try and get it made, even giving away more than he should've).

 

Yeah maybe but to me Fury vs Joshua was more like a local brit bragging rights matchup. Wilder vs Joshua when they were at their best is the only exciting one that I felt we missed out on

 

Wilder turned it down because he would have made less than AJ, and Wilder wanted 50-50 of the split.

I also remember Wilder made AJ a mysterious 50 million pound offer but that made no sense and AJ was right to reject that.

That both is if I remember correctly, as there was a lot of different things going on in that saga then.

 

I could see arguments both ways. AJ was defo more marketable than Wilder and he would have made Wilder a stupid amount of money - more than he would have made ever by far, AJ sold millions of PPVs in the UK - although Wilder not being that big in America, would have brought a big new American audience to this particular fight as AJ hadn't interested the American market enough. It was a huge huge opportunity for both fighters.

Wilder had the final belt that AJ needed to be undisputed (not that it matters that much TBH, it is also the most prestigious belt the WBC), and Wilder had that belt longer than AJ despite beating second-rate fighters. AJ needed Wilder as much as Wilder needed him, people don't realise this - with both risking their perfect undefeated records then.

Fury accepted 50/50 for example and Fury despite having no belts - was the lineal champion which holds just as much if not more validation as having 2/3s of the belts IMO. If you're AJ looking back 7 years ago now (time flies!), I think there is a sense to AJ's side that he really regrets not doing 50/50 as he could have beaten him and had a much greater legacy by becoming undisputed.

60/40 to the winner would have made sense.