By: Sean Crose
“The two fighters have agreed to fight each other next.” So legendary American promoter Bob Arum has told Sky Sports. As Arum tells it, both Fury, who holds the WBC and lineal heavyweight titles, and Usyk, who holds the WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight titles, are professionals who know what needs to be done in order to make a fight between them become a reality. “With Fury and Usyk we’re dealing with two adults,” Arum said, “not a lot of back and forth. Usyk is a good friend of mine, he’s very intelligent and Tyson is Superman, both as an athlete and as an intellect.” Should the two men face off next, it will be to see who is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
Arum indicated that the process of making the necessary arrangements should prove to be smooth sailing, especially by the infuriating standards set by recent high profile negotiations. “Both of them want the fight,” he said. “We’ll be able to make that happen. I’m very, very confident. As I said the fighters have both agreed to fight each other next without any interim fights.” Fury’s last bout was a destruction of old friend and foe Derek Chisora several weeks back while Usyk was last seen outboxing former titlist Anthony Joshua in their rematch last summer.
Arum went on to add that a Fury-Usyk battle would be going down “in the first four months of next year,” though questions of when and where were still yet to be answered. “Now the question is what’s the date and what’s the site,” Arum said. “But that fight is definitely going to happen.” Obviously any battle for the undisputed heavyweight crown is going to be a big deal, so Arum, who co-promotes Fury, wants to be sure the venue will be up to par with the event it will be hosting.
“We are balancing a couple of significant offers from the Mid East,” he said, “and also there’s the possibility of doing the fight in the UK at Wembley with a massive 95,000 crowd in attendance.” Arum went on to say that: “We’ll have it all sorted out…I hope maybe by the end of the year.” That’s a pretty tall order considering the fact that there’s less than two weeks left in 2022. Still, a Fury-Usyk match is something fans would certainly like to see go down sooner rather than later. There hasn’t been an undisputed heavyweight champion since April of 2000, after all, back when Lennox Lewis reigned supreme.
