Tyson Fury sent the boxing hype train off the tracks last week when he dropped the biggest hint yet that he is coming out of retirement.
‘The Gypsy King’ announced back in January that he was quitting the sport following the second of back-to-back losses to the great Oleksandr Usyk in world heavyweight title showdowns.
Since then he has been enjoying life at home in Lancashire with wife Paris and their seven children, but all of a sudden last Monday we got the first major hint that he could yet be back.
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He released an 11-second video with trainer Sugar Hill Steward with the message ‘you know what’s coming’, enough to persuade most experts that another Fury comeback will happen.
If Fury does return, the biggest fight out there for him right now is of course that long-awaited showdown with great British rival Anthony Joshua. The two have had several false starts in the past – they even signed to meet in 2021 before Deontay Wilder won an arbitration ruling to force a trilogy fight with Fury instead.
Now though there are few barriers – neither man holds a world heavyweight title any more so there are no sanctioning bodies to please. And the huge investment from Saudi Arabia, headed by Turki Alalshikh, means rival TV networks are also no longer a thorny issue.
What did Fury video really mean?
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn responded to that Fury video with his own take on what it meant, and he provided a fascinating perspective.
Speaking to talkSPORT, the Matchroom Boxing supremo claimed: “I think that, you know, Tyson’s got a history of, kind of, you know, teasing a few bits and pieces when boxing’s hot. I mean he would’ve watched Benn/Eubank on Saturday, and must have just thought to himself, you know, ‘I could be involved in something probably even, well, it would be even bigger than that,’ which is hard to fathom.
“And then of course Dubois against Usyk gets announced, and, you know, I think, Tyson is a competitor, I think he’s still got plenty left in the tank, and I expect him to be back and, you know, we just hope that’s an Anthony Joshua fight, but I guess that’s down to him.”
One thing Hearn is certain about, is that a Fury vs Joshua fight is now more straightforward than ever to make.
No barriers now to superfight
He reasoned: “Yeah, I do. I think, you know, in the past it’s always been one’s a champion, and one’s a challenger, now both guys are in a similar position and they’re coming off a defeat, erm, Fury two defeats.
“I think they’re both still pretty much in their prime, and you know as we saw last Saturday, sometimes you don’t need the World Championship belts, sometimes when you’ve got two champions trying to become undisputed, it’s all a little bit cagey, and like, this is… Benn/Eubank was just a great example of two guys that went to war. And you know, that’s exactly what you get with Anthony Joshua against Fury.”
Current world heavyweight champions
Fury and Joshua are of course on the outside looking in when it comes to the world heavyweight title picture.
Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois hold all of the marbles right now – Usyk is the WBC, WBA, WBO, Ring magazine and lineal champion, while Dubois is the IBF title holder.
They will meet at Wembley Stadium on Saturday July 19 to unify the titles, with the winner becoming only the sport’s second undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis back in 1999. The first was Usyk with that epic defeat of Fury in Riyadh last May.
