There seems to be some friction in the camp of WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury 33-0-1 (24) around who he should face next.
Just last week the 35-year-old Brit ruled out ever facing WBA, WBO and IBF heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk 21-0 (14), leaving one of the most anticipated fights of the modern era on the table.
Fury, who is currently in training to face boxing debutant and former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou in Saudi Arabia on October 28, dismissed the idea out of hand of facing the 36-year-old Ukrainian southpaw.
“Nope, I am not interested in fighting Usyk. He’s a little Ukrainian dosser. That’s all he is to me. No interest in unifying the division. It doesn’t mean shit to me,” Fury told The Daily Mail.
“All that stuff about unifying and whatever, it really doesn’t mean anything to me. I am looking for the biggest payday. Most of the time, Usyk doesn’t cut it.
“He’s just a foreign person who doesn’t speak good English so you can’t really sell him. I am looking for probably another American. Probably looking to fight Jon Jones in a boxing fight.”
Fury’s co-promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank sung a different tune.
“It won’t be hard to make,” Arum said to Sky Sports. “I know the Usyk people, they’re nice people. His manager, his promoter, they’re terrific people.
“Usyk himself is a terrific guy. I think he wants that fight. I think that fight’s going to happen and hopefully it will happen sooner rather than later.
“I would like to see him fight Usyk. I think once he fights Usyk and assuming he beats Usyk then I think he’ll do a victory lap, maybe two more fights and let the younger guys take over.”
Now Top Rank president Todd DuBoef has doubled down on the company’s position, insisting the fight can and will be made.
“Absolutely,” DuBoef told Sky Sports. “I think we were plagued by timing in this last go-around. Timing from both guys just didn’t match up and we were trying to squeeze this fight in, in the spring, before the [Daniel] Dubois-Usyk mandatory had to happen.
“There were a bunch of circumstances, so the good news is Usyk came out of the fight with Dubois. Some people thought he didn’t look as good as they thought he would, but it was a really good, competitive fight.
“Tyson is going to stay razor-sharp and hopefully is going to be fighting the baddest man on the planet, and they’re going to be going at it. I think, soon after that, it would be appropriate, and the stars should align for timing purposes, that the unification happens very soon.”
Usyk’s promoter Alex Krassyuk is all in for the fight.
“We’ve always been optimistic and cooperative,” Krassyuk said to Sky Sports. “Usyk even accepted a 70/30 split [in Fury’s favour] early [than] this to make it happen.”
