Tyson Fury vs Deontay Wilder: Why hunger will trump skill in American’s legacy-defining rumble

For Wilder the bout is everything Fury already experienced in his German whirlwind, realisation, vindication, popularity, legacy

I can vividly remember watching Tyson Fury’s bamboozling win over Wladimir Klitschko in a dank nameless sports bar in the West Country. Surrounded by a troupe of pixelated screens, a floor sticky with spilt pints, and cocaine-lined cubicles from where a burly bug-eyed man barged his way out proclaiming it a “Christmas snow party”. The inglorious potpourri to a fight as dry and fuzzy as the setting it was received.

Yet, in a strange almost masochistic fashion, Fury’s tedious style, jinking like a windsock on a coastal runway, was captivating; the room gawping as a 6’9” beast of a man somehow danced like a giant’s night at the ballet, trancing his ten-year reigning opponent into submission.

Holding, squeezing, bear-hugging Klitschko like a human-juicer while prodding to the liver and kidney. No kneecaps rattled, shinbones buckled, or ankles unburdened. Just a rabid and unbridled grind to victory. The pent-up determination of almost 15 years of visualisation and pure desire coming into gruesome sweaty reality.

Three years on and 140lbs off, Fury’s Lazarus-like return has been meticulously recanted throughout the boulevard build-up to Sunday morning’s fight, culminating in Fury taking to the scales topless yesterday like a weight transformation advert for an unscrupulous supplement company.

His comeback is already a victory unto itself. His cult status cemented, willing thousands to set their alarms to 4am to see the man who has returned to Mount Sinai – a feat implausible a year ago as he sat a at 27 stone gorging two cushions in a Monte Carlo casino.

Yet what remains for Fury when he steps into the Staples Centre can now only be secondary to what came before. In the ring, there is no higher plateau than the mantle reached three years ago, no matter how storied his comeback has been. Something Fury admitted himself this week. “Once you’ve achieved it, it’s just another thing,” he said. “Just another pair of shoes in the closet.”

Instead, despite defending his WBC Championship for the eighth time, it’s Wilder who is effectively closer to the role of challenger which Fury wore three years ago. After 40 fights, the American’s only standout victory came in his most recent, when he was almost starched by middle-aged Cuban Luis Ortiz in the seventh round.

Wilder after defeating Bermane Stiverne to win the WBC title in 2015 (Getty)

Unlike Fury, Wilder has never had that moment of pure catharsis. He won his world title via an underwhelming points decision – the only of his career – against a B-level Bermane Stiverne who had only picked up the vacant title a fight before. The WBC Champion remains an unknown entity to much of the American public, as Fury gleefully evidenced when walking around Los Angeles this week asking strangers if they knew their heavyweight champion. The answer? Only two out of 50.

So for Wilder this fight is everything Fury has already experienced in his German whirlwind: the realisation, vindication, prize, popularity and legacy. It’s fuelled him into a feral hound like state, frothing almost incoherently through press conferences and growling in media meets. And in that same vein, Fury’s hunger can’t peak those preternatural desires of Dusseldorf.

So farfetched did Fury’s comeback seem nine months ago that it’s already been labelled as one of the most remarkable in sport. A period in which his career has come full circle and he to a struggling peace with himself, whether adulated or ostracised, in riches or poverty. And such is boxing’s cruel nature that that in itself, not the guzzled pints or neighing nostrils, may be what ultimately brings his downfall.

And knowing that, it’s a loss which Fury wouldn’t begrudge his rival. After all, this is Wilder’s legacy-defining rumble. The type of which Fury has already and irreversibly had no matter what the outcome at dawn. After which Fury can return to what he has already stated was important to him ahead of this fight: returning to Morecambe for Christmas.