Boxing’s heavyweight title plot thickens

With Oleksandr Usyk and Anthony Joshua set for a rematch next month and Tyson Fury open to coming out of retirement to fight the winner if his terms are met, we could finally have an undisputed champion

Professional boxing’s heavyweight division at the moment is the most interesting it has been in years. 

Three fascinating characters currently dominate the main-event space: Oleksandr Usyk, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. And the enticing possibility of an undisputed heavyweight champion finally being crowned doesn’t look remote anymore; indeed, there’s a real chance it will happen.

Unified world champion Usyk, who holds the WBA, WBO, IBF and IBO belts, will face Joshua in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on August 20 in a rematch of their London bout last year. Usyk had dethroned Joshua at a sold-out Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Fury, who beat Dillian Whyte to retain the WBC world title in April, had said then that it was unlikely he would fight again. “I have to be a man of my word, and I think this might be the final curtain for the Gypsy King, and what a way to go out,” he said.

But not everyone took Fury’s words at face value. This, after all, was a man who can’t seem to live without boxing. 

“What motivates me? It’s definitely not a few quid, it’s a fact there’s nothing else,” he once said. “I’m boxing because I can. I don’t enjoy anything else, I don’t have any hobbies. After boxing I will be a very sad, lonely person. I’ve tried raising animals, four-wheeled driving, got a shotgun licence, clay pigeon shooting, nothing turns me on.”

Moreover, Fury is yet to vacate his WBC title, which some experts see as a sign that he has ambitions of becoming the first heavyweight since Lennox Lewis to reign as the undisputed king. So it wasn’t a big surprise that ahead of Usyk-Joshua II, a fight dubbed ‘Rage on the Red Sea’, Fury said he would meet the winner — if his terms were met.