An exclusive WBN chat with Hall of Famer Bob Arum on Thursday evening included an update on the reported Pay-Per-View figures for Tyson Fury vs Deontay Wilder II.
Initial suggestions that the heavyweight blockbuster did under a million sales have been corrected by Arum, who says digital purchases haven’t been considered.
Therefore, Fury’s spectacular victory over Wilder in front of a sell-out crowd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas did indeed hit over one million sales.
Fury vs Wilder PPV buys
“Regarding the Fury vs Wilder (II) Pay-Per-View, they don’t have the digital numbers yet. The digital is well over 300,000 buys,” Arum exclusively told World Boxing News.
“It’s probably sort of accurate (the 850,000 reported). But then you add in the digital on top of that. So three hundred and change (to 850,000). It’s closer to 1.2 million.”
Once officially crunched, those final tallies will be a solid return to the big time for heavyweight boxing in the United States.
This is good news for the overall industry as it would affect the pay for boxers positively in the future.
Not since the days of Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, and Mike Tyson has such buzz been around the top division in the biggest market.
Arum sounded happy with how everything went down, having initially predicted around two million PPV buys for the event.
What happens now is Fury and Wilder will undoubtedly go at it again in the summer [also confirmed by Arum]. This is despite moves from Anthony Joshua’s team to try to make Fury break his contract with Wilder for a third fight.
Fury vs Joshua
Joshua must first deal a mandatory against Top Rank’s Kubrat Pulev. Arum stated Joshua vs Pulev isn’t even agreed yet, contrary to reports from Fresno – where Hearn held a press conference.
“Anyone talking about an Anthony Joshua fight with Tyson Fury is very premature,” Arum told World Boxing News exclusively.
“Joshua has to fight Pulev, and we have a big problem with the site. For Pulev and Joshua, the British Board is not being very cooperative.
“Pulev is now going to go to purse bid because he doesn’t want to fight in the United Kingdom.”
Asked to elaborate on why – Arum stated: “We are just not going to do the fight in the UK. Because we don’t get a level playing field.”
