WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury has been relentlessly calling out anyone and everyone since knocking out Dillian Whyte in his last fight in April.
‘The Gypsy King’ picked up a sixth-round KO win over Whyte at Wembley Stadium earlier this year before announcing his retirement from professional boxing.
Almost immediately after, he invited UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou to the ring to talk up a potential hybrid rules fight that remains in play for 2023.
Intent on following in the footsteps of Floyd Mayweather, who has had four lucrative exhibition bouts since retiring, Fury travelled to Iceland with his father in search of a potential opponent.
Hafthor ‘Thor’ Bjornsson, the former World’s Strongest Man – who also played The Mountain in Game of Thrones – made headlines when he started exchanging words with Fury on social media.
Fury’s trip to Thor’s home country proved fruitless as, unbeknownst to him, the man he hoped to face off with was actually in Rome shooting a movie.
During this time, he also mentioned The Rock, Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis and Frank Bruno as potential opponents but none of them showed any interest.
Fury soon turned his attention back to real, active boxers, namely Derek Chisora, a former friend who irked the 34-year-old by publicly backing Whyte to knock him out at England’s national stadium.
Inspired by a potential trilogy fight with Chisora, the 32-0-1 boxer ended his short retirement and claimed to have sent a £2million fight offer over the man he’s already beat twice.
However, fight talks between the British duo amounted to nothing with both men blaming each other for a fight no-one really wanted to see falling through.
After retiring again and watching Oleksandr Usyk outpoint Anthony Joshua for a second time, Fury flirted with the idea of an undisputed fight with the Ukrainian but only for an obscene amount of money.
“It’s the biggest fight in the world so it needs to be the biggest pay day in the world. [Floyd] Mayweather got £400million to fight [Manny] Pacquiao, I want £500m,” he told talkSPORT in August.
Usyk ruled himself out for the rest of 2022 due to injury but Fury had a taste for fighting once again and decided to offer Joshua, who is on a two-fight losing streak, a shot at his world title.
Joshua agreed terms to face the Gypsy King at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff on December 3, however, a delay in signing a contract has put the fight in serious jeopardy.
While boxing promoters Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn are working tirelessly behind the scenes to make the biggest fight in British boxing history, Fury is undermining them by calling out other boxers.
Most notably, Mahmoud Charr, who hasn’t fought a relevant opponent since 2015 and that was former cruiserweight king, Marius Briedis, who viciously knocked him out.
Charr claims to have signed a contract to fight Fury and the heavyweight duo have been going back and forth on social media while a potential fight with Joshua remains in limbo.
Finally, after Joe Joyce picked up a career-best win over Fury’s teammate Joseph Parker, talk soon turned to a fight between the two British fighters.
“I’ve got to say that big Joe Joyce is the second best heavyweight in the world, behind myself and on his day, given his moment, who knows if he could beat me or not?” Fury said.
“I think we’ll have to find out one of these days.”
Despite all the talk, Fury still doesn’t have a fight booked.
It’s expected that he will return to the ring in December, meaning it’s now time to stop calling people out and start putting pen to paper on a fight contract.
