Raiders bringing Fury-Wilder III to Allegiant Stadium?

We know the Top Rank Boxing very much wants the Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder third WBC Heavyweight Title showdown to be held this year. And now, it looks like it could be headed for the new home of the Las Vegas Raiders with socially distanced fans in attendance.

In a social media post Thursday night reporter Mick Akers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal confirmed that the Raiders have been having serious talks with Bob Arum and Top Rank about Wilder Fury III at their facility:

Raiders’ President Marc Badain confirms talks have occurred with Bob Arum and Top Rank about possibly hosting Deontay Wilder (@BronzeBomber) vs @Tyson_Fury ll at Allegiant Stadium Dec. 19. #vegas #raiders #stadium #boxing pic.twitter.com/gkZ0xVwIkI

— Mick Akers (@mickakers) July 1, 2020

First, Arum and Top Rank deserve a tremendous amount of credit for having pulled off the last three-plus weeks of fight cards within their “bubble” at the Las Vegas MGM Resort. It is the only consistent boxing with stringent guidelines for testing and safety for the Coronavirus.

And, yet, they’ve still been accommodating the fighters, their corner personnel, all of the Nevada officials and ESPN personnel to broadcast the fights, etc. within the “bubble” putting on a decent product at least twice a week, albeit without fans.

Now, the next level of the sport resuming some normalcy is to begin to have socially distanced fans at the events. That could mean the use by Top Rank (and others) of the MGM Grand Garden Arena, which was the site Fury’s 7th round TKO win over Wilder in February.

Or, they could use other facilities like the T-Mobile Arena, where four division world champ, Canelo Alvarez, has headlined on DAZN, etc. on more than one occasion in the last few years.

Allegiant Stadium is the brand new billion-dollar home of the Raiders, who just moved from Oakland to begin play this NFL season there.

And, the fact that a 70,000 seat indoor facility could be used to house the boxing has been an intriguing idea to help have at least some crowd of a few thousand or more fans, socially distanced, while precautions are still being taken for the Coronavirus. And, a football stadium could easily hold 2-3 times more than the smaller indoor arenas with social distancing. That would represent millions more in live gate revenue, too.

We have theorized that the Unified Lightweight title fight between Vasiliy Lomachenko and Teofimo Lopez could possibly be held at Allegiant Stadium in September for the same financial reasons.

As Akers tweeted the Raiders are slated to play at home on Thursday night December 17th against the L.A. Chargers. That would allow approximately 48 hours for the set up for a Saturday night December 19th title fight.

The Raiders are also slated to play home games on Sundays December 13th and December 27th. So, it appears that’s the only logical date to be able to have Fury-Wilder not conflict with the Raiders in Allegiant Stadium late in the final month of the year.

Now, we wait to see if this all comes together for the promotion and the fighters.