As Oleksandr Usyk dazzled his way around the ring in the centre of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, picking apart Anthony Joshua’s title defence blow by blow, there was arguably nobody more disappointed than Tyson Fury – aside from AJ himself.
Fury kept to his part of the deal. Two fourth-round knockdowns aside, it was always expected that he would overcome Wilder in the third part of their trilogy.
By then, what promised to be a glittering finale – and it was – had lost some of its appeal. Fury can still clinch a unification bout with the winner of Usyk or Joshua’s rematch now that Wilder is definitively out of the way, but AJ’s armour is severely chinked by two losses in his last four fights, including his shock stoppage at the hands of Andy Ruiz Jr.
At the very least, just by fighting Wilder, Fury set foot where Joshua has not. When there was significant clamour from fans for Joshua and Wilder to fight during Fury’s two-year hiatus, Eddie Hearn did hold talks with the “Bronze Bomber’s” camp, but a financial deal could never be agreed. It was never entirely clear which side was to blame.
Yet Joshua’s unsuccessful defence against Usyk could yet see him fight Wilder, if indeed the latter has not retired by then.
Fury’s next fight
As the reigning WBC champion, Fury will now be required to face mandatory challenger Dillian Whyte, as long as he overcomes Otto Wallin – that fight takes place on 30 October.
Whyte has long wanted Hearn to set him up with a title shot and it will be a just reward for four years of waiting and for the way he has bounced back after defeat to Alexander Povetkin.
After Whyte, Fury will be set up for a unification out against the winner of Usyk’s rematch with Joshua.
Wilder’s next fight
We may well have seen the last of Wilder. So emphatic was Fury’s victory in the end that the American was hospitalised as a precautionary measure.
While Wilder no longer has any hopes of becoming undisputed heavyweight champion, he does have a role to play in all this. The loser of Joshua or Usyk 2 could be well-poised to take him on and he would not have the same height disadvantage against the Ukrainian as he did against Fury. Wilder against Joshua would be a far more physical fight and he would be looking to stun the former IBF, WBO and WBA champion like Ruiz.
Alternatively, if Whyte loses to Fury, it is possible the British contender could face Wilder towards the end of 2022 – but Wilder is already 35 and is running out of time.
On The Last Stand podcast, Wilder admitted he felt retirement “getting close”. “I’m seeking one champion, one face, one name,” he said. “The faster I can get that, the faster I can retire and get the hell out of here.”
Could Fury still fight Joshua?
In the run-up to Saturday night, Frank Warren, Fury’s promoter in the UK, insists there would still be a huge appetite for Joshua, calling it a “massive fight”.
“There’s a few options there,” Warren told BBC Sport. “Usyk would be a massive fight. The Joshua fight is still a massive fight. I do believe the public buys into that fight even if AJ isn’t champion. If he did fight Tyson he would have a lot to prove and I do think the public would buy into it.”
Whoever Fury faces, Warren does not want him fighting stateside again in the immediate future. His last fight outside the USA was in Belfast in 2018, when he beat Francesco Pianeta at Windsor Park.
Whyte believed Fury wasn’t ‘serious’
Now that the WBC have intervened, Whyte finally has some clarity about his direction post-Wallin – as long as he beats the Swede – when initially, he had called into question whether Fury was interested in making their encounter happen.
“Tyson Fury hasn’t spoken to anyone from my team about any fight,” Whyte said. “If he was serious, he would have sent emails or phone calls and we’d have been talking.
“If he was serious I would probably have even waited for him and not fought until December. But these fights are big fights, big fights don’t get made in one or two months. There’s a lot of things that need to happen.
“If he’s serious, he would have been trying to make the fight now. He just talks rubbish. He’s a clown, I can’t take a clown seriously. What do you do at clowns? You laugh at them.”
There are plenty of other possibilities outside the big five too. Joe Joyce would be keen to throw his hat in the ring after beating Daniel Dubois and Carlos Takam. Had Dubois not lost that fight, his vision obscured by a serious eye injury, he might have been in the conversation for a title shot sooner, but the 24-year-old is in the process of rebuilding his career.
