Tuesday 12 January 2016 15:11, UK
Deontay Wilder would beat Tyson Fury but the heavyweight division is now "wide open", according to promoter Lou DiBella.
Wilder (35-0-KO34) makes the third defence of his WBC crown on Saturday against Artur Szpilka (20-1-KO15) live on Sky Sports 1 and, on the same card, Vyacheslav Glazkov and Charles Martin face off for the vacant IBF title stripped from Fury.
Fury is seen by many as the divisional kingpin with the WBA Super and WBO belts he seized from Wladimir Klitschko in November, but DiBella believes 30-year-old Wilder would win a unification bout between the two champions.
DiBella told Fightnews.com: "Right now it should be a wide open field. Tyson Fury, power to him. He fought really well and took advantage of a point in time and he did what he was supposed to do. He's the heavyweight champion right now.
"He has got a legitimate belt that he got by beating the man. So respect to Tyson Fury. No disrespect to him. But anybody can beat him on any given night. There's nothing to think that Tyson Fury is going to be a dominant force where he's not in a real fight against a lot of different people.
"Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder? Well, I'm not going to look past January 16. But I would be picking Wilder, frankly. But it's a fight a lot of people are going to pick Fury in. People are going to argue about it.
"I don't know who wins between Glazkov and Martin. Does a Martin-Glazkov fight mean what a Klitschko-Fury meant? No, but it creates a new major player in a heavyweight division that needs major players. And if the big American kid wins then that's a whole different dynamic, too."
Szpilka's sole career defeat came at the hands of Bryant Jennings, who stopped him in the 10th and final round before losing to Klitschko.