It’s official, from the mouth of Frank Warren: Tyson Fury will NOT be fighting Oleksandr Usyk this year. Speaking once again with Talk Sport, Fury’s co-promoter said Fury’s next fight, which he says is “done” and will hopefully be announced “in the next week or so,” will prove to be a “game-changer.” This has of course led to much speculation, with fans wondering who Fury will fight next.
Warren, who said the December show set for Saudi Arabia we have all been reading about, may now happen in “the first quarter of 2024.” This leaves Fury to move on and Warren says Fury’s next fight will indeed be big.
“I’m hoping we’ll have an announcement in the next week or so,” Warren said regarding Fury’s next fight. “We’ve pretty much done what we want to be doing, but we’re not in a position to make the announcement. His fight’s done, we can’t hang around. He will not be fighting on the Skill Challenge show in December because they’re talking about their show now being postponed until January. I think their head of boxing Amer Abdallah said they’ll probably be moving it to the first quarter of 2024, that’s up to them. Tyson really wants to fight and we’ve got to make it happen. We have to make things happen, we can’t wait for people to make things happen.
“We tried to make it happen three times already this year with Usyk, contrary to all of the social media crap, he didn’t want it. If he’d have wanted it, the fight would’ve taken place. What he wants to do is wait and he thinks he’s getting his $70 million in Saudi, and I understand that. I absolutely get that, but stop the nonsense that the fight’s not happening because of Tyson.”
Fans of course have their own opinion on why the Fury-Usyk unification showdown did not happen, but let’s not get bogged down with that tired story again. Bottom line, the fight didn’t happen, and it is we fans who lost out. So what about Fury’s next fight? Warren certainly put out a teaser:
“It’ll be a bit of a game-changer in a couple of weeks’ time,” Warren said. “It’ll be a massive game-changer and it’s gonna be interesting to see the fallout from it. You’ll find out in a couple of weeks. I guarantee you, you’ll say to me in a couple of weeks, ‘That’s a game-changer.’”
To repeat, speculation is already rife due to what Warren has said. Who could Fury’s next opponent be? Names from Jon Jones to Francis Ngannou have been suggested as possibilities, while some suggest it could even be Anthony Joshua (I know what you’re thinking! Here we go again!).
Warren did say to Talk Sport that Fury is “up” for a fight with MMA star Jones. But until the official announcement comes, and hopefully it will come and will not be mere talk once again, all we can do is speculate over who Fury’s “game-changer” fight will be against. And when, and where the fight will take place.
