sport news AJ, Wilder Fury: The deals that could derail the bouts fans crave

At its core, boxing is a simple sport - a battle between two fighters, primed after months of training in often unsophisticated surroundings, armed only with hands to cause and avoid damage.

However, in a trade rife with contradictions, it's perhaps fitting that money and politics reign supreme.

While fighters search for an edge on their rivals amid the austere surroundings of the gym, the real battles are being fought in the boardrooms, and in the shadows of the bright lights.

It's there where promoters and TV executives jostle for position and strike deals which benefit themselves, their fighters, but rarely smooth the road of negotiations.

Rarely was this more evident that on Tuesday, when it was confirmed that Deontay Wilder's rematch against Tyson Fury was off, for now at least.

Only last week the lineal champion declared he would 'fight anyone' and urged his rivals against using 'boxing politics' to avoid him. Now we know Team Fury will take a detour on their assault of the heavyweight division.

In theory, the Gypsy King is only kicking the can down the road. After all, what harm have more months of trash talk and anticipation done to a promotion?

Yet Wilder, like everyone else scarred by experience, knows better than such optimism. 'You sorry m********,' began his foul-mouthed response to Fury's decision.

Boxing fans, too, are growing weary. Often accused of being fickle, they are right to feel robbed. In the era of padded records, pay-per-view and splintering TV coverage, this stings. 

They're paying for their brief temerity to dream big. When Fury twice climbed off the canvas in his draw with Wilder, the foundations were laid for a truly great era of heavyweight boxing.

Three months on, we know no combination of Fury, Wilder and Anthony Joshua (who faces Jarrell Miller on June 1) will fight before the autumn. Many fear they will never meet at all.

It's a grim prospect but one which doesn't seem to faze Fury: 'I've got nothing to prove,' he told the BBC last week. 'If the rematch happens it happens, if it doesn't, it doesn't. It's not the end of the world. It's only a boxing fight.'

His is a diplomatic outlook, but one seemingly at odds with a man who shed 10st to relaunch his career.

He continued: 'I want the (rematch) to happen so let's make it happen, where better than the biggest TV station in the world to do it?'

Here lay the most telling line of his answer, the moment the mask slipped ever so slightly. For Fury, a man of rich fighting stock, is not immune from the business of boxing.

Last week he signed an £80million deal with Top Rank and ESPN to give himself a springboard into the lucrative American market.

It was a tactical move, too. By aligning himself with ESPN, Fury and Frank Warren believe they will no longer have to go cap in hand to talks with AJ and co.

Not that that counts for much now. For not only are Fury and his rivals walking separate paths, they are actively entrenching themselves in opposing territories.

They are all now sided with different promoters, each of whom have different affiliate TV networks, each of whom pay big money for big

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