Ignore the pantomime undertones - Deontay Wilder vs Tyson Fury is a rare and real fight which carries true risk

Tyson Fury stood tall, started to move, looked slick and was getting ready to test Deontay Wilder’s nerve in a volatile piece of spontaneous choreography when the two men met on Monday.

It was part glorious slapstick, part menace and equal parts mayhem in London when Wilder and Fury seemed to zig-zag the crowded floor hurling insults, pushing and shoving from inside a beefy phalanx of their people, a glorious term in the boxing world of anarchy. The two unbeaten fighters made similar vows in a raw pantomime of nastiness, with enough comedy and laughs to balance perfectly the very real threats of violence.

The big men – 6’7 and 6’9 – were separated by muscle and increasingly thin assurances, but it was still an edgy confrontation inside the vast BT studio at the official announcement for their 1 December fight at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles.

Wilder will defend his WBC heavyweight title against Fury in the type of fight most in the old game thought had vanished in a world where challengers have just been endlessly recycled during the last decade or more. They are both unbeaten, both in their heavyweight primes and they are also opposites in so many ways that they could be different fighting species, and not two towering boxers with the sense to take the type of serious risks that all great heavyweights must take.

This fight is a real risk for both and a big defeat, a loss without reasons, will make it difficult for the defeated fighter to return undamaged from the debris. A draw, a tight defeat for Fury or any type of loss for Wilder will almost guarantee we get to dance again next year and in that rematch the pay-per-view numbers will be bigger. This fight is not just about a few final digits kicked free by a bean counter to somehow prove a boxer’s worth and dismiss his talents – this fight is about more than popularity.

“Taking fights like this is what makes a fighter great,” said Frank Warren, a promoter with old-fashioned methods at the core of his operations. “I said we could make it and we did – they both want to fight and that is essential at every level when trying to get two boxers together. The rest was just negotiating.”

Both boxers are totally convinced that they have the clearest of edges, the other man at some type of mental disadvantage and they seem amazed at any failure to grasp what to them is crystal clear. It is rare at this, the highest of levels, to hear such utter conviction from such experienced boxers. The bookies have wavered, narrowly bent their opinions against any gentle winds of reason and settled for the moment on installing Wilder, unbeaten in 40 with 39 ending quickly, as the thinnest of favourites.

On Monday after the screaming and jostling and in the calm they each shared their thoughts: Fury could hear Wilder’s heart beating and saw fear in his eyes and Wilder simply visualised victory and insisted Fury knows that he will lose. Total conviction. “I could hear the big dosser’s knees trembling,” added Fury. There was no mumbo-jumbo attached to their various assertions and all thoughts ended with the other man knocked out, and that is what the heavyweight championship is all about. The fight is also, incidentally, for the hearts, minds and pockets of the American fight public, an adoring audience starved of big men to back and trading on the increasingly ancient memories of Mike Tyson, Riddick Bowe and Evander Holyfield.

Today the roadshow stops in New York before ending with one final series of confrontations in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The pair will have polished their acts by then no doubt, but the show in London had enough heartfelt passion to help glide this fight above any cynicism; this fight is rare and real, a fight with ridiculously high rewards and sickeningly low prospects for a bad loser. It’s poised, it’s full of obvious endings and results that are splitting a business thriving with experts.

Fury insists it’s not the money, Wilder never even mentions money and neither of these two boxers have to give a second glance to anybody calculating the dangers to endorsements. They will fight for a lot of money, make no mistake, but there is clearly something else happening here – these two just want to fight. And that is great news for the heavyweight division.