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At 11:18 pm ET Saturday night, the Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury 3 fight officially helped deliver the most one day traffic to the Gambling911.com website, surpassing that of the Super Bowl and Kentucky Derby.
The previous record-holder June 6, which featured an exhibition match between YouTube sensation Logan Paul and Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs) finished Wilder for the second straight time in their three bouts, but only after a back-and-forth event featuring five combined knockdowns and several apparent moments of imminent defeat for both men. Wilder ultimately ended up facedown on the canvas at 1:10 of the 11th round after a chopping right hook fired from high in the air by the 6-foot-9 Fury.
“It was a great fight,” said Fury, the sport’s lineal heavyweight champion and a former unified world champ. “It was worthy of any trilogy in the history of the sport. He’s a top fighter, and he gave me a real (test) tonight.”
Wilder (42-2-1) was knocked down in the third round and appeared to be on his way out, but he improbably rallied to knock down Fury twice in the final minutes of the fourth. The British champion was profoundly shaken, but he also gathered himself and fought on.
“He caught me twice in the fourth round, but I was never thinking, ‘Oh, this is over,’” Fury said. “He shook me, put me down, but that’s boxing, and that’s life as well. It’s not how many times you get knocked down. You’ve got to keep fighting and keep moving forward.”
Fury knocked down Wilder again with a concussive right hand midway through the 10th, but Wilder recovered and even stunned Fury in the final seconds of the round.
Fury persevered — and after the referee jumped in to wave it off in the 11th, Fury climbed onto the ropes in weary celebration before a frenzied crowd of 15,820 at T-Mobile Arena on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip.
- Don Shapiro, Gambling911.com (The Associated Press was used in this report)
