Boxing’s top-tier heavyweights set for hectic period to dictate future of division

The coming months will see a number of the division’s biggest names clash to set up the prospect of even grander fights in 2023

Tyson Fury, Oleksandr Usyk, Anthony Joshua, Deontay Wilder, Andy Ruiz Jr, Luis Ortiz, Joseph Parker, Joe Joyce, Dillian Whyte, Robert Helenius and a few other of the best heavyweights of this generation are getting ready for some sort of fight.

Fury has just officially come out of his latest retirement and has instructed his paymasters that he is back. He has also asked for “half a billy” for the fight with Usyk; a sum that is impossible to generate in real life. If you are interested, send your offer to his lawyer.

Fury told the WBC, the sanctioning body with the flexibility of a Marvel character, that he will continue to fight, which is a great relief. A dozen or so days ago, the WBC had refused to accept Fury’s retirement. Sleep on it, big man, they told him; he did, he watched Usyk win and he made his demands. The world has until Thursday of this week to match his demands.

Usyk will be back in uniform, armed and patrolling his district of Kyiv with his brigade of brothers by the time the clock ticks on Fury’s ultimatum. A fight with Fury will not be the only thing on the great patriot’s mind; Usyk will not get the fight through a relentless social media campaign.

Meanwhile, Joshua will likely return in December and that will be part of his inevitable comeback in the hearts and minds of the people that helped make him famous and rich: the fans. The gang of cynics hounding him will shrink as he busts up a few good men to put himself back in the frame by about May of next year. Heavyweight boxing is really not a complicated game; you win, you have knockouts and you get rewarded. It helps if the public joins and backs the party; they will once again get behind Joshua after a quick win or two.

The chasing pack is a lot more volatile, hungrier and most have something to prove.

Anthony Joshua has now lost to Oleksandr Usyk twice in the space of a year (Nick Potts/PA) (PA Wire)

Whyte was last seen scrambling up in the ring in front of 90,000 people at Wembley back in April. Fury was looking on from a neutral corner and getting ready to dance; Whyte has been back in Portugal at his training camp, getting his body and head ready for a return. A grudge fight with Joshua has been mentioned and that would do amazing business.

This Sunday, Ruiz, who knocked out Joshua in 2019, fights the ancient Cuban, Ortiz, for the legitimate right to call himself the real contender. Ortiz, even at his advanced and hard to verify age, remains a danger in the division; it will not be a fight for the purists or the squeamish. Both men could be future opponents for Joshua and Usyk. According to the record books, Ortiz is still only 43.

A few weeks ago, Wilder ended the doubts over his future when he agreed to fight Helenius; they meet in Brooklyn, New York, in October. Helenius is a survivor in the dirty business, an avoided fighter in many ways. Wilder will be getting back in the ring after his back-to-back savage defeats by Fury. He still remains a potential one-punch threat to anybody in the division. There have now been more than six years of talk about a Wilder and Joshua fight. Please, don’t hold your breath.

Joyce against Parker is on in Manchester at the end of September; it is the forgotten fight, a genuine gem where there is so much risk involved for both men. They could have so easily taken easier routes. Or, just waited for a big call about a bigger fight. They both should be commended for their willingness to meet each other. The fight is all part of the long and impressive sequence of heavyweight fights – the list started in Jeddah when Usyk beat Joshua.

Joe Joyce (left) and Joseph Parker will go head to head in September (Getty Images)

I calculate that eight of the top 10 or so heavyweights are fighting in a tight, eight-week period. That is rare in the modern game and it offers some immediate comparisons; it also means that the same men can meet each other at the same time in the first four or five months of next year. They will all be, in other words, at about the same stage.

And there will be cameos by Derek Chisora, Frank Sanchez, Hughie Fury, Otto Wallin, Michael Hunter and Filip Hrgovic. In one year, it might be all about the big Uzbek, Bakhodir Jalolov, currently unbeaten in 11 as a professional and the winner of a gold medal at last year’s Olympics. They are all busy, planning fights, recovering from fights.

The exception is Fury and he must really hate not being part of what is happening. He is in the gym non-stop, running, punching, talking, boasting, roasting and staying relevant. There is no mystery, no magic surrounding Fury’s deliberations: he misses the business he owns.