If we’ve seen the last of Tyson Fury, he went out as dramatically as he possibly could.
The heavyweight champion outboxed frustrated challenger Dillian Whyte for almost all of five-plus rounds, leaving little doubt about his superiority over his countryman in front of 94,000 fans Saturday at Wembley Stadium in London.
But it’s the final moment of fight that fans will never forget, a brutally perfect right uppercut that put Whyte on his back, ended the fight in Round 6 and sent the raucous crowd into a tizzy.
Tyson Fury said GOODNIGHT pic.twitter.com/JiN85UVPRh
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) April 23, 2022
Afterward, Fury, 33, reiterated that he plans to retire at the top of his game. Of course, many will find that hard to believe, particularly because he and MMA star Francis Ngannou talked about some sort of clash after Fury said he would call it quits.
“Dillian Whyte is a warrior,” Fury said. “And I believe Dillian Whyte will be a world champion. But tonight … I’m one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. And unfortunately for Dillian Whyte he had to face me here tonight.
“He’s strong as a bull and he had the heart of a lion, but he wasn’t messing with a mediocre heavyweight. He was messing with the best man on the plant. And you saw what happened.”
Fury (32-0-1, 23 KOs) was coming off back-to-back knockout victories in his second and third fights against Deontay Wilder, fights in which Fury fought more aggressively than he had in the past.
Against Whyte (28-3, 19 KOs), he was patient. He jabbed, he threw straight power shots between Whyte’s guard, he moved when it behooved him and he clinched when the challenger got close enough to do damage.
The formula neutralized everything Whyte tried to do, leaving the Londoner so frustrated that he threw wild, amateurish punches and resorted to dirty tactics.
Two and half minutes into Round 6, it appeared as if Fury might cruise to lopsided decision over the ineffectual Whyte. Instead, Fury delivered one of the more epic knockouts in recent history in his first fight in home country in 3½ years.
With about 10 seconds remaining in the round, Fury planted his feet and, as his opponent moved toward him, unleased the uppercut and found Whyte’s chin. Whyte started to fall forward, prompted Fury to give him a shove and send him to the canvas.
Whyte, badly hurt, was able to get to his feet. He was even able to take a step forward when referee Mark Lyson instructed him to do so. However, he stumbled in the process, which prompted Lyson to signal the end of the fight by waving his arms as fans at Wembley roared.
The official time of the stoppage was 2:59 of Round 6, Fury’s earliest knockout since he put Tom Schwarz away in two rounds in June 2019.
And that, according to Fury is that. He had suggested that this would be his swan song – at least in a boxing ring – in the weeks leading up to the fight. And he made it clear after his victory Saturday that he wasn’t joking.
“I promised my lovely wife Paris that after the Wilder three fight, that would be it,” he said. “I meant it but … I owed it to the fans, I owed it to every person in the U.K. to come here and fight at Wembley.
“Now that it’s [done] I have to be a man of my word. I think this is it. This might be the final curtain for the ‘Gypsy King.’ And what a way to go out!”
Then, as Fury was conducting a second interview in the ring only a few minutes later, he called Ngannou to the microphone and the two seemed to indicate that a meeting between the two is in the works.
Ngannou, a 35-year-old from Cameroon, said their meeting would be a “hybrid fight” with MMA gloves – which means it wouldn’t be sanctioned as a boxing match — but neither went into great detail. The two would earn at least seven figures (eight? nine?), so the event makes sense from an economic perspective.
Then, of course, he could target the winner of the tentative rematch between fellow titleholder Oleksandr Usyk and Anthony Joshua in what would be another opportunity to build his already-sterling legacy.
Of course, no one – perhaps not even Fury – knows whether he’s finished with boxing. We do know he’s the best in boxing’s glamour division at what does and has never been a bigger star. In other words, he has his world on a string.
It wouldn’t be easy to walk away from that.