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Tyson Fury remains skeptical about fighting Anthony Joshua or Oleksandr Usyk anytime in the near future.
Fury is currently getting set to fight former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou in a crossover boxing match taking place Oct. 28 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
However, the fight boxing fans really wanted to see was him against Usyk in a heavyweight title unification clash. It looked like it would happen earlier this year only for negotiations to fail with many blaming the WBC heavyweight champion for pricing himself out of it.
Fury, however, maintains it was Usyk — who defends his heavyweight titles against Daniel Dubois this weekend — who avoided the fight and still remains doubtful about fighting him in the future.
“We don’t really know the reasons why Usyk didn’t take the fight in April,” Fury told Sky Sports (via Boxing Scene). “I’m sure he’s got his reasons. Then we find out he signs with Skills Challenge [Promotions], the Saudi Arabia boxing people. Whatever his reasons are, I’m sure it’s to suit him and his family. It is what it is.
“I do believe that you can only do what you can do in this sport—if the fight’s available at the time you take them and if they’re not available then you can’t take them. Will we fight in the future? Hopefully. I like to, I always believed it’s an easy fight.”
The same applies to Joshua.
Joshua recently made it two wins in a row after his knockout of Robert Helenius. His plan now involves beating Deontay Wilder before going on to face Fury in an all-domestic clash.
However, given how negotiations have failed in the past, Fury doesnt' see that fight happening either.
“I fought for years and years and years me and Joshua would have fought each other and he’s not been wanting to do that challenge for years,” Fury said. “You can’t force somebody into doing something no matter how much money there is or … whatever there is on the line. You can’t force somebody to do something that they don’t want to do. Unless both parties are willing, then these fights don’t get made as we’ve seen over the years.
“In this last year, I’ve tried two or three times. It’s always not happened for whatever reason. I’m not optimistic. During the negotiations of this year, I was very optimistic. But there was a lot more stuff going on. After that, I was like, ‘It’s not happening.’ I even bet with [promoter] Frank Warren, a 10,000 pounds bet that it wouldn’t get signed and he said it would in a week, so I won the bet.”