Dec 9, 2021, 2:00pm EST
Source: MMA Fighting
Photo / Image: Reuters
What’s next for Tyson Fury after his monster win over Deontay Wilder? According to Fury’s promoter, Top Rank executive Bob Arum, plans are already in motion for the two-time heavyweight boxing champion to have a busy 2022 slate.
“Everybody, I think, on our side, wants him to fight [Oleksandr] Usyk,” Arum explained on a recent episode of The MMA Hour. “But Usyk is obligated to [Anthony] Joshua, who has a rematch clause. And now there’s Dillian Whyte, who’s the mandatory challenge. And it becomes very, very complicated to go right to an Usyk fight.
“So my hope is that Usyk fights Joshua and Tyson Fury fights Dillian Whyte, and then hopefully Usyk — who is a lovely young man and a great fighter — wins his fight, and Tyson Fury wins his fight, and they can fight a unification battle next September.” Fury (31-0-1) has been on a victory tour since stopping Wilder with an 11th-round knockout in the pair’s trilogy bout in October. The fight was hailed by many as one of the greatest heavyweight contests in recent memory and gave Fury a commanding 2-0-1 lead in his much-celebrated series with the American power puncher.
The question of what may come next for Fury was answered earlier this month when the WBC ordered Fury to defend his title against mandatory challenger Dillian Whyte, who recaptured his WBC interim heavyweight belt in March with a revenge win over Alexander Povetkin via fourth-round stoppage. With Fury’s preferred opponent — WBA, WBO, and IBF champion Oleksandr Usyk — locked into a rematch with Joshua, a unification bout between the two is out of the question until both sides are able to take care of business in early 2022. And according to Arum, that could mean a homecoming is likely nearing for Fury. “I’d like to see him fight Dillian Whyte in the UK at the end of February, no later than the beginning of March,” Arum said of the Englishman. “That’s what Fury has told me. “He’s done his last five fights, five or six fights, in the United States, and it’s time that he went back home to the UK to do another fight. When we get to the unification fight, we’ll take a look at it and see what the best venue is for that fight.”
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