Maybe it’s because of all the attention this Saturday’s Joshua-Klitschko fight is getting. Maybe it’s because the heavyweight division is as interesting as it’s been in quite a few years. Maybe it’s because he feels he’s the best heavyweight on the planet. Whatever it is, Tyson Fury has made his mind up: he still wants to be a fighter and he wants to regain his past glories.
Fury, out in Marbella training with good friend and reigning WBO middleweight champ Billy Joe Saunders, has vowed to shed around 100 pounds (he reportedly ballooned up to somewhere around the 360 pound mark during his 17-month inactive spell) and come back to rule the division again.
“Just been sat downstairs will Billy Joe and had an in-depth conversation about our lives and careers, and what we wanna do and where we wanna go,” Fury says in a video he has released on social media. “You know I’ve never been sure, even the day after the Klitschko fight, that I’d ever fight again. Well the thing is I’ve made me mind up. I am definitely, definitely going to return. God willing – Inshallah – I will return and return to my best. I don’t believe, on a serious note, there’s a heavyweight out there that can lace my boots up. Any of ‘em! And I’m gonna prove the world wrong yet again. They didn’t give me a prayer last time, and a lot of people are not even giving me a prayer to lose the weight, but I will do it. Hundred percent.”
So, can the 28 year old giant do it? Can he shift the weight first of all, and can he then get in there with whoever the world champions are and beat them? It could be a tough ask, or maybe we will see a great comeback. The reported plan is for Fury to return to action on July 8, on Saunders’ under-card (assuming Tyson gets his licence back at the scheduled May hearing, that is) – so that would suggest an eight-round or maybe a ten-round tune-up type of fight.
After that, if he’s still in the frame of mind he is in right now, Fury should get in with the big names. The idea of Fury facing the likes of the Joshua-Klitschko winner, Deontay Wilder and even Joseph Parker (no disrespect, the WBO champ is simply not that big a name, yet) makes it hard not to cheer the big man on as he tries his best to get back to where he was a year-and-a-half or so ago: on the verge of possible greatness.