WHEN Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder went head-to-head over the course of their increasingly fractious three-city media tour, promoter Frank Warren frequently found himself trying to keep the two irascible heavyweights apart. “No one else would do it would they? Where’s the security?” he said jovially.
He was however concerned that without some intervention it could quickly have got out of hand. “I’m always there because a clash of heads your fight’s off, cut eye, it happens. It happens,” Warren said.
“People think it’s a get up,” he continued. “They sat on the same sofa, you’ve seen the whole video and it’s not the case. They’re in the studio, what are you going to do… It’s the green room, you all go in there.”
Warren does believe it has all played into Fury’s hands ahead of his challenge for Wilder’s WBC heavyweight title on December 1 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. “Tyson’s very bright, Tyson’s very clever and I like Deontay, Deontay’s a really nice guy, I’ve got a lot of time for him as well. But Tyson from the press conference, in the mental stakes, he got the edge,” Warren said.
“He’s come away with the mental edge. For some fighters that’s important. It’s certainly important for Tyson, as he proved against Klitschko.”
Fury is preparing for the big fight at Big Bear in California. “He’s happy as anything, he’s prepared. As much as he’s been out of the ring, this is the first time he’s had back to back fights before fighting for a world title. Before one of them he’d had one fight in 12 months,” Warren noted.
Although he is stepping up to world level early in his comeback, the promoter insists Wilder would be foolish to underestimate this challenger, saying of Fury, “His confidence has given me the confidence to make the fight.”
