Tyson Fury completed one of the greatest comebacks in modern sports history on Saturday night when he knocked out Deontay Wilder in the seventh round to add the World Boxing Council’s version of the heavyweight championship to his own lineal claim to the title, delivering the definitive outcome their first encounter failed to produce.

The Gypsy King, whose career appeared left for dead when he departed the sport for more than two years amid public battles with addiction and mental illness, made good on his promise to press for a knockout in the hotly anticipated rematch against a man regarded as boxing’s most dangerous puncher. As foretold, he came forward from the opening bell, dropped the champion for the first time in a decade with a right hand to the temple in the third round, then again with a clubbing left to the body in the fifth.

Tyson Fury beats Deontay Wilder to win WBC heavyweight championship – as it happened
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By the sixth, Wilder was bleeding from his left ear, his legs were gone and he appeared unable to adequately defend himself as Fury relentlessly picked him apart. When referee Kenny Bayless waved it off at the 1:39 mark of the seventh after the champion’s corner threw in the towel, it set off scenes of pandemonium among the sold-out crowd of 15,816 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

“He will be back,” said Fury, who serenaded the audience with a rendition of Don McLean’s American Pie immediately afterward. “He will be champion again. But I will say, the king has returned to the top of the throne.”

The conventional wisdom dictated that Fury would have been well-suited to reprise the tactics from their epic split draw 15 months ago, when he spent most of the evening boxing Wilder’s ears off mostly from the outside with erratic feints, a stubbornly effective jab and deft upper-body movement belying his towering 6ft 9in frame. Even after suffering knockdowns in the ninth and 12th rounds, the latter of which left him seemingly unconscious on descent, Fury came off the floor each time and finished the round getting the better of the exchanges.

For Saturday’s rematch, Fury had replaced Ben Davison, the astute young trainer who marshaled his astonishing comeback from a personal abyss, with the Kronk Gym alumnus SugarHill Steward. He deliberately packed on extra weight, eating six meals and drinking eight litres of water daily in search of a size advantage against the lighter American, coming in at 273lb at Friday’s weigh-in compared to Wilder’s career-high 231lb.

Tyson Fury celebrates after his victory
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Tyson Fury celebrates after his victory. Photograph: Étienne Laurent/EPA
The Briton had also told anyone within earshot that he would be more offensively minded for the sequel, where he went off a slight underdog with the oddsmakers. But no one in the run-up, including Wilder, was certain whether to take him seriously. The only thing you know about Fury, boxing’s clown prince, is you never know.

Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) sprung from his corner at the opening bell and began pumping double jabs at his opponent’s head while circling to his left, but the challenger slipped most of them with ease. Fury was slow to start but moved the 6ft 7in champion back with a combination later in the frame that sent the crowd to their feet and walked through a massive shot from the American in the second. Wilder appeared slower than in their first fight, as if compromised by the extra ballast.

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Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) came out even more emboldened to start the third, throwing more punches in fluid combinations as Wilder’s output began to wane. Then toward the end of the round after a break in the action, Fury dropped Wilder with a looping right hand set up with a quick-fire jab along the ropes, sending the audience into a frenzy. It was only the American’s second time on the canvas as a professional and the first since he was floored by journeyman Harold Sconiers, some 30 bouts and nearly 10 years ago in a fight he won by fourth-round knockout. A reeling Wilder went down again in an exchange moments after beating the count, but Bayless ruled it a slip.

By now Wilder, whose bleeding left ear suggested a damaged eardrum, was completely out of sorts as he looked to land the right hand to the point of self-parody. By the fifth, his legs had abandoned him and he was reduced to crude, lunging attacks that Fury could see from miles away. When Fury sent him to the deck for a second time with a thudding left to the body, you began to wonder when the referee would intervene. Bayless would deduct a point from Fury for hitting behind the head during the round but the outcome at that point felt like a fait accompli.

Fury knocks down Deontay Wilder in the fifth round.
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Fury knocks down Deontay Wilder in the fifth round. Photograph: Al Bello/Getty Images
The challenger poured on the punishment in the sixth, making th