Aside for the tens of millions of dollars he made in 2023, Tyson Fury has been having a bit of a rough run lately.
“The Gypsy King” showed up fat and uninspired to his October fight against former UFC heavyweight champ Francis Ngannou, getting punked by the newbie boxer as a result. Only a questionable scorecard saved him from defeat. And then he was forced to pull out of a highly anticipated unification bout against Oleksandr Usyk due to a bad cut above his eye.
The cut is real, but Usyk’s team has wondered whether Fury got it on purpose to avoid their February 17th fight. The match is now set for May 18th, but that hasn’t silenced critics who wonder whether Tyson is preparing to step away from boxing.
Not so, according to Fury.
“I keep hearing talk of people saying that I should retire or I’m going to retire soon or whatever,” Fury said in a video posted to his social media accounts. “I ain’t retiring anywhere!”
“I’ve got two fights with Usyk, for the undisputed twice. Then I’m going to fight AJ at least once. Maybe twice if there’s a rematch, if he wants one after the first battering I give him, and then I’m going to fight Ngannou again, and that’s just to start. So there’s five little fights for you to whet your appetite with. I ain’t going nowhere. Nowhere. I’m 35 years old, in the prime of my life.”
MMA fans whose boxing interests lie mostly with Francis Ngannou will notice Fury put “The Predator” at the end of his list of fights. That may not be up to Tyson, though. All of these big money heavyweight fights are happening at the direction of Turki Alalshikh, who runs Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Entertainment.
While the standard in boxing is to do an immediate rematch on big fights like Usyk vs. Fury, Alalshikh has already stated he wants the winner of Anthony Joshua vs. Francis Ngannou to face the winner of Usyk vs. Fury. Since he’s the one shelling out the eight figure paydays, he calls the shots here.
So, in theory, all Ngannou has to do to jump the line is defeat Joshua on March 8th. That’s no small feat, but we stopped betting against Franny the moment he put Tyson Fury to the canvas in round three of their fight.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
