The two-time heavyweight champion announced his retirement back in January, but one current fighter has backed the British star to make a comeback
Heavyweight star Joseph Parker believes Tyson Fury will make a return to the ring, providing he has the ‘heart’ for it.
Back in January, the two-time heavyweight champion shocked the boxing world after announcing his retirement. Fury made the announcement in a short video. “Hi everybody, I’m going to make this short and sweet,” he said to the camera. “I’d like to announce my retirement from boxing. It’s been a blast, I’ve loved every single minute of it. I’m going to end with this. Dick Turpin wore a mask. God bless everybody, see you on the other side. Get up!”
The 36-year-old has been heavily tipped to fight fellow British heavyweight Anthony Joshua in 2025, but that now looks completely off the table. The ‘Gypsy King’ lost his last fight in December to heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, the second time he’d been defeated by the Ukrainian.
Amid rumours of a potential comeback, Fury has been enjoying some quality time with his family. Parker – a long-time training partner and friend of Fury – has weighed in on a potential return to the ring for the Morecambe brawler. The Kiwi has tipped his good pal to return if he puts the work in and hopes he settles the score with Joshua.
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In an interview with FastSlots, he said: “If Tyson has the heart for it, if he wants to put in the work with training, and if he wants to achieve anything else in boxing [he will comeback].
“He’s achieved everything there is to in boxing, obviously not undisputed, but if he wants to come back he should. If he doesn’t want to come back, enjoy his retirement, enjoy his family time. I would like to see him fight AJ. I would love to see it. It’s been spoken about for a long, long time.”
The Brit recently made a stunning career change as the former heavyweight world champion will co-manage the England football team for Soccer Aid 2025. He will manage the team alongside former Manchester United and England forward, Wayne Rooney. Prior to the announcement, the ‘Gypsy King’ uploaded a video to his Instagram page walking through the Old Trafford tunnel with an England flag and captioning the post: “Did you miss me?” The footage went viral on social media – with many believing he was set to announce his return to boxing.
Following the recent announcement, Joshua was served yet another blow as Fury is now seemingly focusing on match later this summer. As for Parker, the New Zealander secured one of the biggest wins of his career in February after knocking out Martin Bakole.
Since then, he’s called for a showdown with Usyk, and the 33-year-old is hoping to go toe-to-toe with the Ukrainian at some point. “I feel like the fight with Dubois is dead. I feel like the fight with Usyk is dead because they want to fight each other and unify and become undisputed,” he said.
“For Usyk, if he does it [becomes undisputed] again, he’ll be the first fighter in history who’s done it twice. I can understand where Usyk is coming from [wanting to fight Dubois]. I can even understand where Dubois is coming from. The timing for him getting sick is not the best timing just before our fight. But, if I was him I would do the same thing, I would go and fight for all the belts.
“My viral video was filmed at Karekare beach here in New Zealand with like black sand. Kerry Russell was behind the idea, he’s a big part of my team. He was filming a lot for YouTube, like our camps and our training, and he came up with the idea for these videos. The response from the general public and people who support boxing want to see me and Usyk fight. But I don’t think people understand, there’s a lot more that goes behind the scenes At the moment the fight between myself and Usyk is not even talked about. But doing all these videos is fun. It takes you away from boxing. There’s a lot of bloopers and we’re just enjoying ourselves while making some fun content.”
