Top Rank’s CEO Bob Arum, who co-promotes WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, believes Oleksandr Usyk has a very good chance of shocking IBF, IBO, WBA, WBO champion Anthony Joshua.
Fury and Joshua were finalizing a deal to face each other on August 14th in Saudi Arabia – but everything chanced on Monday, when an arbitrator ruled that Fury must honor a contractual rematch to Deontay Wilder. Fury was given until September 15 to finalize that fight.
The sudden change forced Joshua to go in another direction – with a quick decision to satisfy a WBO mandatory defense owed to Usyk.
Usyk, who unified the entire cruiserweight division in 2018, made the move to heavyweight the following year.
Because he held the WBO title at cruiserweight, Usyk was automatically made the mandatory challenger in his new weight class.
He saw action back in December, winning a tough twelve round decision over heavyweight veteran Derek Chisora.
Should Joshua and Fury win their respective fights, they will be positioned to fight each other in November or December.
However, Arum is not convinced that Joshua will come away with a victory in his next outing.
“I think Joshua has his hands full with Usyk, I give Usyk a hell of a chance to beat Joshua in that fight,” Arum said to IFL TV.
“Hopefully Tyson comes through and we can do the unification fight in December of this year.”
Fury stopped Wilder in seven rounds back in February of 2020 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. In the aftermath of that fight, Wilder exercised his contractual option for an immediate rematch.