As the countdown continues to Deontay Wilder vs Tyson Fury II early next year, WBN looks back on how the situation of a second fight arose.
With contrasting views that Fury may have won ten rounds to two, or Wilder claimed the first due to his two knockdowns, there’s one thing that is apparent.
A professional boxing judge saw Wilder winning SEVEN ROUNDS of the twelve we witnessed back in December.
Despite Wilder landing no more than FIVE PUNCHES in six of the sessions, Mexican Alejandro Rochin gave the American four of those rounds without knockdowns being scored.
It’s quite an amazing statistic. To give Wilder the fight 115-111, means Fury won less than half of the rounds witnessed in Los Angeles.
In those first four sessions, Fury clearly out-scored Wilder in two (third and fifth). One round, the eighth was too close to call, whilst the other was a knockdown round in the twelfth.
At the time of scoring, Rochin faced no questions from the World Boxing Council and has continued working ever since.
The other two judges had the fight considerably closer to where the witnessing public stood.
In a nutshell, Fury clearly won the THIRD, FIFTH and the TENTH, with Wilder winning only the NINTH and TWELFTH clearly. Those are the two rounds in which ‘The Bronze Bomber’ had Fury on the canvas.
Now going on percentages, which is something CompuBox outlined, Wilder only claimed the twelfth outright.
116-110
Obviously the ninth goes with the champion due to the knockdown, so Fury really had a fathomable case to win 10-2.
This would have been 116-110 in favor of Fury after Wilder’s two 10-8 rounds. So how Rochin can score seven rounds, and not one single even round – from all those closer three minutes – is a big question mark.
There is an argument that Fury didn’t do enough to take Wilder’s belt, though. You have to be convincing. And for too many of those rounds Fury didn’t take the bull by the horns.
WBN scored 114-112 to Fury, which by and large seems the correct score for fight one.
TEN from twelve rounds Fury only landed single figures of blows, and that means we need that second fight to truly see where that green and gold belt belongs.
As things stand, the return is pencilled in for February 22nd in Las Vegas, fully dependent on Fury’s recovery from plastic surgery needed for a hellacious cut at the hands of Otto Wallin.
Phil Jay is Editor of World Boxing News. Auxiliary member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Follow on Twitter @PhilDJay