{"id":595488,"date":"2026-04-09T10:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T10:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/595488\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T10:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T10:54:08","slug":"boxing-fabio-wardley-says-tyson-fury-is-unlikely-to-be-world-heavyweight-champion-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/595488\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxing: Fabio Wardley says Tyson Fury is unlikely to be world heavyweight champion again"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Tyson Fury beats Arslan Makhmudov on Saturday, I wouldn’t be surprised if he calls me out – and I’d 100% be up for that fight later in the year.<\/p>\n

In fact, I was pushing for Fury as an opponent before we announced my upcoming fight with Daniel Dubois.<\/p>\n

I was the one saying yes, and he actually was the one that said: “Let me have a little time, I’ve had a year out, let me have a warm-up.”<\/p>\n

Of course, the priority for me will always be an undisputed fight against Oleksandr Usyk – I want to test myself against the best in the world – but if Fury does his thing and, God willing, I defend my belt against Daniel Dubois next month, then we can have a conversation.<\/p>\n

I never actually expected Fury to stay retired.<\/a> It’s great to have him back, active, posting on Instagram, doing his shout-outs and whatever he does.<\/p>\n

He is the biggest crossover star in British boxing – the guy with his own Netflix reality show, the guy who fought in the WWE.<\/p>\n

I didn’t really feel like he was gone, more that he was just taking a break, as he does. When he said he was retired, I thought: “We’ll see you in a year.”<\/p>\n

But although it’s good to have him back in a boxing ring, in the current state of the heavyweight division, I can’t see how Fury becomes a world champion again.<\/p>\n

He would have to fight either me or Usyk – and do I think he can beat either of us? No.<\/p>\n

If the titles get fractured – if Usyk is stripped of a belt for one reason or another – and Fury fights someone like Lawrence Okolie or Agit Kabayel for a vacant title, then yes, he can become champion.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the belts, there will always be an appetite for him to fight Anthony Joshua as well.<\/p>\n

No matter what, they could be 50 and if we haven’t seen it, we’d still want to see it. It would generate huge public interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Tyson Fury beats Arslan Makhmudov on Saturday, I wouldn’t be surprised if he calls me out –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-595488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}