Tyson Fury – Deontay Wilder III: Wilder Silent at Press Conference

LOS ANGELES, California — Heavyweight champion Tyson Fury and former champion Deontay Wilder met onstage and stared each other down for several minutes on Tuesday afternoon. But that was all the talking Wilder would do.

Wilder, keen to regain his title from the one man who beat him, said little after thanking his team, letting new trainer Malik Scott speak for him. Wilder, Scott explained, had done all the talking he intended to do, and would do the rest in the ring.

The fight, scheduled to take place July 24 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, is the third between Fury and Wilder, whose animated rivalry has quickly become one of the most iconic in the history of professional boxing.

In December 2018, Fury, who was the lineal champion (“the man who beat the man”) after defeating Wladmir Klitschko in 2015, challenged Wilder, who became the World Boxing Council (WBC) champion after defeating Bermane Stiverne the same year. The thrilling fight at the Staples Center in Los Angeles ended in a rare draw, after the hard-punching Wilder knocked Fury down twice, and Fury stood up on “nine” to beat the count in the twelfth and final round.

In February 2022, the two met again at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. This time, Fury took a far more aggressive approach — licking the blood off Wilder’s neck at one point — and the referee stopped the match in the seventh round.

Fury had been training to face British heavyweight Anthony Joshua, who holds the title belts from the World Boxing Association (WBA), the International Boxing Federation (IBF), the World Boxing Organization (WBO) and Ring magazine. That fight would have unified all of the major heavyweight championship titles. However, a judge ruled in arbitration hearings that Wilder was entitled to a rematch against Fury, postponing a future clash against Joshua.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.