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We got some big news on Friday, and we’re one day out from fight night in New York. Oh and in California. Anyway, here’s the roundup.
Top Stories
In a tremendous power move, Deontay Wilder has pretty much stolen all the thunder during Joshua-Ruiz fight week. First he announced his rematch with Luis Ortiz a couple of days ago. OK, whatever, it was expected and nobody’s that high on it.
Then on Friday, he announced that the deal is done and signed for a rematch with Tyson Fury, likely in early 2020. Top Rank/Fury haven’t confirmed this yet, for what it’s worth, and they may wait a couple weeks, until Tyson’s fight with Tom Schwarz is in the past. But as wild as boxing can be, it does seem unlikely to me that Wilder would make that announcement without having the terms agreed and signed. If he were for some reason just lying about it, that would come back and just destroy his image.
Anyway, Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz Jr weighed in, too. They fight Saturday night on DAZN, and we’ll have live coverage beginning at 5:30 pm ET. Ruiz weighed in at 268, which is higher than he was in April, and heavier than he’s been since 2014. But he did a really admirable job trying to suck his gut in for the photos.
We also had our staff picks for Joshua-Ruiz, Taylor-Persoon, and Smith-N’Dam. Joshua also talked to Carl Frampton about hard lessons learned against Wladimir Klitschko.
Quick Hits
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- Hey! We’ll also have live coverage of the Alexander-Redkach PBC show, which airs at 8 pm ET on FS1, with prelims starting at 6 pm ET on FS2.
- Bob Arum says things are on track for a Vasiliy Lomachenko vs Teofimo Lopez in the first part of 2020, but it still could be tough. As Wil noted, Lopez has said repeatedly that he’s not sure he’ll be able to make 135 anymore past the end of this year. And it’s not as simple as all that, anyway. Lopez has to beat Masayoshi Nakatani and the Richard Commey-Ray Beltran winner, and Lomachenko will have to beat Luke Campbell and get out with no injuries or anything. It’s on the table, but the table might be a little off center.
- Amir Khan’s hip testicle is fine and he’ll be back to fight on July 12 in Saudi Arabia against Indian fighter Neeraj Goyat. Khan has wanted to fight in Saudi Arabia for a while and, well, this is about as good as he was going to make it at this point.
- It doesn’t seem to matter now, but Eddie Hearn says Dillian Whyte is mad that Tyson Fury decided not to fight him.
- Former heavyweight titleholder Joseph Parker has signed with Matchroom on a three-fight deal, which is good timing because boy is AJ gonna need opponents for a bit here, and I suppose since Parker went the distance with Joshua, there’s some semblance of a story there. Parker will fight June 29 on the Andrade-Sulecki bill.
- Arsen Goulamirian has been elevated to WBA “world” cruiserweight titleholder, and will be in line for a shot at Denis Lebedev, who was quietly reinstated as “super world” titleholder when Oleksandr Usyk vacated.
- Teiken Promotions won the Kenichi Ogawa-Azinga “Bazinga!” Fuzile purse bid, with the winner in line for a shot at the belt held by Tevin Farmer.
- Showtime won some awards at the BWAA Awards dinner thing and provided some good photos from the event, so why not run it?