Even during his brief hiatus, Fury remained the ghost at every heavyweight feast.<\/p>\n
Promoters, broadcasters and rivals all spoke as though he remained in the room.<\/p>\n
In north London on Saturday, he was back to his familiarly unpredictable self.<\/p>\n
There was an emotional tribute to the late Ricky Hatton, plus moments where Fury appeared to admire his own work mid-fight, and then the other side of his persona – the man who goes on the offensive verbally.<\/p>\n
In many ways, boxing missed him and the timing of Fury’s return has been deliberate.<\/p>\n
Hours after his win, season two of At Home with the Furys lands on Netflix. By tying boxing to a platform of that scale, the sport has regained a level of mainstream exposure it has not enjoyed since the terrestrial boom of the 1990s.<\/p>\n
The streaming platform – with its 325 million global subscribers – will release viewing figures soon, but the Makhmudov match-up could prove to have been one of the most-watched boxing fights in years in the UK.<\/p>\n
There would be even greater clamour for Fury v Joshua.<\/p>\n
Possible venues are already being discussed. Croke Park, with its 80,000-plus capacity, has emerged as a leading contender.<\/p>\n
It would be an unusual setting for the biggest fight in British boxing history – a Dublin stage for an English rivalry.<\/p>\n
But wherever it takes place, the location now feels almost secondary. The perfect moment may have passed, yet the fascination refuses to disappear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even during his brief hiatus, Fury remained the ghost at every heavyweight feast. Promoters, broadcasters and rivals all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-601672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601672","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=601672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}