By Charles Brun: WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman says they could install #3 Anthony Joshua as the mandatory challenger to heavyweight champion Tyson Fury but has failed to get a fight he badly wants for the summer.
Sulaiman says the WBC’s board of governors will soon decide who they plan to install as the mandatory for Fury (33-0-1, 24 KOs).
Choosing Joshua, of course, would be a pointless, silly move on the WBC’s part, as he’s NOT going to waste his time trying to set up a fight with Fury, as AJ is already planning on fighting Dillian Whyte on August 12th before a lucrative battle against Deontay Wilder in December in Saudi Arabia.
Joshua isn’t going to deal with the headaches of trying to set up a fight with the intractable Fury. #2 WBC Andy Ruiz would seem to be the more logical move to be made mandatory for Fury, as the heavyset former unified champion wants that fight and is available.
The WBC will likely make Joshua mandatory symbolically to show they’re trying to help Fury get a summer fight. Still, the reality is that it will be rejected by AJ, and the sanctioning body will need to move down their rankings until they find a contender willing & available to fight Tyson.
High-risk options for Fury
If Ruiz doesn’t take the fight, #4 Frank Sanchez (22-0, 15 KOs) or #5 Arslanbek Makhmudov will be asked. However, it’s very unlikely that Fury would want to fight either of those guys because they’re risky match-ups for him, and he could lose.
With the way the aging 34-year-old Fury fights at this stage of his career, clinching, wrestling & mauling, Makhmudov & Sanchez would be all wrong for him; they do well against that basic journeymen-level style that Fury has been taught by his trainer SugarHill Steward.
Obviously, Fury won’t want to take the chance of losing to Sanchez or Makhmudov and missing out on the massive December payday he’ll be getting against IBF/WBA/WBO champion Oleksandr Usyk.
Predictably, Fury will reject both of those fights and choose to sit idle until December. Whether Fury will price himself out with the Saudis for the Usyk contest will be interesting to see.
“We have to take action,” WBC president Sulaiman told Sky Sports. “There are different options. I will address this with the board of governors because already we’re entering June, and there’s no scenario.
“That’s a possibility. If Wilder and Ruiz are not fighting for the final elimination, Joshua’s right there at No 3. That’s possible
“We have to go through a process. The WBC board of governors will make that decision.”
Assuming the WBC does make Joshua the mandatory for Fury, it would be a move that would make AJ look bad in the eyes of casual boxing fans, who are unaware that he’s already got two fights planned this year.
It would make Fury and his team happy because it would score points, showing that Joshua was the reason they were not fighting rather than because Tyson wrecked their talks last year with his ham-handed approach to negotiations by setting up a deadline as if he was the A-side dealing with a lowly contender.
Interestingly, Fury didn’t use a similar deadline for his fight against the 39-year-old journeyman Derek Chisora, and their negotiations stretched out many weeks, longer than the talks with Joshua.
The impression that some boxing fans got is that Fury was so intent on making Joshua look like an underly, following his Kingly commands, that he wound up losing the fight when AJ decided he’d had enough of being treated like a vassal.
If you’re Fury, it would be better just to sit until December because the way things are going to play out, he’ll be stuck having to fight Sanchez or Makhmudov for his summer fight. He could lose.