On February 22, 2020 Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury II took place in Las Vegas. It was the biggest and most anticipated heavyweight title fight since Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson in 2002.
The fight was a rematch of controversial 2018 first meeting that ended in a draw. Fury outboxed Wilder for the majority of the first fight and the only key moments Wilder had was the two knockdowns especially the 12th round knockdown.
Fury would beat the count and rise up to push Wilder back and hurt him before the final bell rang.
Tyson Fury predicted he would knockout Deontay Wilder in the rematch because in the 12th round of the first fight after he got up from that vicious knockdown he started pushing Wilder back and the power puncher was clueless and couldn’t fight off the back foot.
Fury delivered on his promise dropping Wilder early and dominated the fight by applying non-stop pressure on the fearsome puncher. The fight ended when Wilder’s cornerman Mark Breland threw the towel in the seventh round causing the referee Kenny Bayless to wave it off.
The first fight was on SHOWTIME and did 325,000 Pay-Per-View buys which was an impressive number for two relative unknowns to the mainstream.
The rematch which was a joint network PPV broadcast between ESPN and FOX, and it reportedly did much better according to boxing insider Mike Coppinger.
Coppinger tweeted out on Wednesday that the early reports for the Wilder vs. Fury 2 PPV numbers suggest anywhere from 800-850K buys.
Sources: The rematch between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury generated in the neighborhood of approximately 800,000 to 850,000 pay-per-view buys in North America. Best performance – by far – for a heavyweight title fight since Tyson-Lewis in 2002. Wilder-Fury 1 sold around 325K buys. Feb 26, 2020 @MikeCoppinger
The rumored numbers are very good, but fall far from the confident prediction by Top Rank’s Bob Arum who co-promoted the event suggesting it would top 2 million PPV buys.
The show was a success and shows the heavyweight division is back on the map.
