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Exclusive: WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman provides Tyson Fury retirement update

Tyson Fury after Dillian Whyte bout

The WBC president had an exclusive chat with Planet Sport about the future of Tyson Fury.

Tyson Fury told the world he had fought his last fight as a professional boxer after knocking out Dillian Whyte at Wembley Stadium last month.

The 'Gypsy King' made a second successful defence of his WBC title with a brutal sixth-round stoppage of Whyte and after the fight, Fury said he wanted to focus on being with his family.

If that's the case, Fury will be vacating the WBC title - a belt he won from Deontay Wilder in 2020 before defeating the American in their trilogy bout last October.

However, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman has revealed he will give Fury time to decide but cannot wait forever.

"Tyson Fury confirmed how great he is inside the ring and outside the ring he is also a hero," Sulaiman told Planet Sport.
"We're going to give him the time he needs to reflect, to relax, he just did the mandatory of the division - there's no hurry to pressure him or his team into making any decisions. We will be in communications, he's having holiday with his family.
"I'm not saying we will get him three months, there's no time limit right now I'm respecting the level of Tyson Fury, his private time with his family but we will talk in the near future certainly.

"We need to address the situation if he is retiring but at this time, we are just giving him the much deserved time to enjoy his holidays," added Sulaiman.

Undisputed over mandatory

Should Fury continue to fight, the obvious route is to face the winner of Oleksandr Usyk and Anthony Joshua.

The pair are set to collide in July for the WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight world titles. A date and venue are yet to be confirmed but July 23 is a date that has been mentioned while Saudi Arabia is favourite to host the rematch.

And Sulaiman is open to Fury facing Usyk - the current unified champion - or Joshua to determine the first undisputed champion since Lennox Lewis in 1999. 

"We have been consistent in being flexible and pro-active to promote the best fights the fans want to see so we are open to support any request from any champion we have in the WBC."
Sulaiman also confirmed there are no current plans for a Franchise Championship in the heavyweight division.
"The idea of the Franchise has always been as a concept to move up and down in weight to take on different challenges like Canelo. But at this time, we have not looked into any other Franchise designation situations.
"We had Canelo at middleweight, at lightweight Devin Haney said he will not enforce the Franchise designation which is perfectly understandable.
"And we have one at super flyweight to try to make Juan Francisco Estrada against Chocolatito [Roman Gonzalez] the third fight - it has fallen a few times because of COVID and situations outside of the control of the fighters but we will see what happens."

Wilder in line for shock world title shot?

If Fury is a man of his word and retires then he will have to give up his WBC title and allow the next two ranked fighters to compete for the belt. Deontay Wilder and Joe Joyce are number one and two in the ratings.

Asked about the possibility of Wilder returning for a third successive challenge, Sulaiman said: "Wilder is the number one contender and you have Joe Joyce at number two, three is Joseph Parker.

"I believe [Joyce and Parker] are going to have a fight for the WBO interim championship - we've had no confirmation but we will just wait and see what happens. There are some variables playing around there."

READ MORE: Tyson Fury is 'unstoppable' and his 'personality' has a lot to do with it

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