By Charles Brun: WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman has revealed that his organization will be giving heavyweight champion Tyson Fury two weeks until August 26th to confirm in writing that he’s retiring from the sport.
If Fury (32-0-1, 23 KOs) puts pen to paper to confirm his retirement, the WBC will meet to make a decision on who will fight for their vacant title.
It’s believed that the WBC will order Deontay Wilder to face the winner of the Andy Ruiz Jr vs. Luis Ortiz fight for the vacant title if Fury gives it up.
As of now, Fury has NOT vacated his WBC belt. Earlier today, Fury vacated his Ring Magazine belt, but NOT his WBC title.
If this is another fake retirement game for Fury, he’ll hold onto his WBC title and then wait until the smoke clears from the August 20th fight between unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk and Anthony Joshua. This will enable Fury to decide if he wants to fight the winner or not.
Fury is likely making sure that Joshua wins the rematch with Usyk before he comes out of hiding to put a fight together with AJ for the undisputed.
Usyk is clearly not Fury’s cup of tea, which means he’ll likely swerve him if he beats Joshua next week. There’s more money for Fury to make fighting Joshua than Usyk, and it doesn’t matter if he’s coming off a defeat. The money will still be massive for Fury fighting AJ.
Usyk will likely beat Joshua again, and Fury will wind up looking silly by choosing to fight AJ rather than the unified champion.
“We had a conversation with his promoter, and we gave him ten days, until 26th (August), so they can send us a written confirmation of his final decision”, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman said to Izquierdazo.
“With that, we can proceed to address the situation with the belt.”
“We will wait until August 26th”, Sulaiman said. “That is our deadline to have a formal confirmation of their final decision. We have no rush. He has been a big hero inside the ring and out of it.”
