Tyson Fury said this week that he plans to retire after his April 23 fight with Dillian Whyte. This is of course far from the first time Fury has made such a declaration, and he has instead kept on doing what he loves to do – fight. Training and fighting are the two things that most help Fury with his well-documented battle with mental health problems, and the reigning WBC heavyweight champ has said in the past that when he does hang up his gloves he will be “lost.”
So we can take 33-year-old Fury’s latest retirement talk with a pinch of salt. Still, even if he does walk away from boxing and his WBC title after the fight with Whyte, Fury says he is open to having a “special” fight with Francis Ngannou. There has as we know been plenty of talk of this crossover fight taking place, with UFC heavyweight champ Ngannou insistent that he will try his hand at boxing before he himself retires.
Speaking on the MMA Hour, Fury said “I’ll have retired from competitive, championship boxing, and I’ll be ready to do the crossover fights completely.”
And a fight with Ngannou is the one Fury wants.
“I don’t count that as a real boxing fight,” Fury said of a fight with Ngannou. “That’s not a boxing fight. That’s gonna be a ‘special’ fight. That will be in a cage with 4oz gloves, in Las Vegas at the Raiders Stadium. Francis Ngannou, he’s a big guy, a big dangerous guy. I’d love to see people going on, ‘Oh, it’s not a fair fight in 10oz gloves,’ and that’s correct. So, I think if we’re doing 4oz gloves, he’d have a bit more chance of knocking me out. But then again, I’d have a bit more chance of knocking him out. It makes for an exciting fight, and I’ll try and come in at my heaviest for that fight. I’ll try to come in over 300 pounds, just to nail him to the canvas with one solid punch.”
Some fans feel this fight will never actually happen, while others think it is a real possibility. We would all watch the fight if it went down, that’s for sure. But will Fury really fight Whyte (and he of course believes he will win) and then walk away, not having fought the Oleksandr Usyk-Anthony Joshua rematch winner (whenever this fight happens, delayed as it looks like being due to the ghastly Ukraine situation)?
That would be a disappointment. No matter how “special” a fight it would be between Fury and Ngannou.
