Bob Arum believes Tyson Fury will return to the ring if there is a fight that would make it worth his while on the table.
The Top Rank head honcho looks after ‘The Gypsy King’s’ affairs Stateside.
Arum revealed that the WBC champion is biding his time before deciding on his comeback.
Fury was most recently in action in April when he retained his world title with a sixth-round stoppage of number one contender Dillian Whyte at Wembley Stadium in London.
In the aftermath, the 34-year-old, who has had a public fallout with former pal Chisora, claimed he was retiring from the sport and insisted that a pot of $500million and a fight with Oleksandr Usyk, the WBA Super, IBF, WBO and IBO champion, would be the only thing to tempt him to lace up the gloves again – unless a fight against Anthony Joshua at Wembley materialises.
But Arum doesn’t believe that the latest sabbatical of the character will be a permanent one, despite all the noises being made by the man who recently relinquished the Ring Magazine belt.
Before Fury ‘officially’ came out as retired, Arum told Fighthype.com:
“Tyson Fury is on hold, pending the outcome of the Usyk-Joshua fight.
“I know the Saudis have put up a lot of money for the fight and we’ll see who wins that.
“Fury, deep down, would want to fight the winner and the question then is where the fight will be and all of that sort of stuff and that will all take care of itself after [the rematch].”
Joshua was beaten by former undisputed cruiserweight king Usyk last September at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London and gets his chance to exact revenge on Saturday, exclusively live on Sky Sports Box Office in the UK, at the Jeddah Superdome in Saudi Arabia, with Fury’s former Ring Magazine title now an added piece of hardware to the clash.
Having seen the idea of a Derek Chisora trilogy, with featherweight fighter Isaac Lowe as his new trainer, fall by the wayside in favour of Fury opting to once again walk away, Arum added:
“I think Fury will come back to fight the winner whoever wins.
“I think he’ll want to beat the guy to unify all the titles and then maybe decide that he would retire, but I don’t think he wants to leave that unfinished.
“That’s up to him and I haven’t pressed him, neither has Frank [Warren, Fury’s UK promoter], but we will once the Usyk-Joshua [second] fight has happened.”
In a more recent interview with FightHype, Arum was specifically questioned about Fury’s situation, when asked: “can expect to see him fight for a few more years then, is this retirement stuff is just hogwash?” Arum replied definitely:
“It always was.”