Boxing history was made on Saturday night when Oleksandr Usyk was crowned the first undisputed heavyweight champion of the four-belt era.
The Ukrainian was forced to dig deep in a split decision victory against Tyson Fury this weekend, and was emotional in the aftermath as he paid tribute to his late father. But his time with all of the belts is expected to be short-lived as he will be stripped of one title in the coming days.
Usyk entered his fight with Fury as the unified WBA, WBO and IBF world champion and also held the less prestigious IBO belt. He added Fury’s WBC to his collection, as well as consolidating himself as the lineal heavyweight champion.
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Oleksandr Usyk to be stripped of belt just days after Tyson Fury fight
Usyk now holds world titles with four different governing bodies, all of which have different mandatory challengers. He initially earned his belts by defeating Anthony Joshua as the WBO mandatory, and has since defended in a rematch and against the WBA’s choice Daniel Dubois last summer.
But he won’t have time to make up his IBF mandatory, particularly if Fury exercises the rematch clause the pair have for a second fight in October. Instead he will have to give up the belt, with Filip Hrgovic then set to fight for it.
Hrgovic will face Daniel Dubois on the Matchroom Boxing vs Queensberry 5v5 card in Saudi Arabia on June 1. And it is expected that the IBF belt will be on the line for that fight, which doesn’t appear to bother Usyk too much.
After the fight, both he and Fury appeared uninterested in talking about their next moves in the ring after such a gruelling training camp. They both put in double time as their initially scheduled February bout was cancelled when the Brit suffered a cut, and hastily rearranged for last Saturday.
“I don’t think about boxing now, please,” Uysk told reporters in Saudi over the weekend. “My camp started in September 2023, I worked for nine months.”
“I missed Happy New Year, I missed my son’s birthday, I missed my daughter’s birthday and then the birth of my daughter. I also missed family holidays. I was only focused on this fight, now I’m happy and I want to go back home.”
Tyson Fury refuses to confirm rematch with Oleksandr Usyk after close loss
Fury was similarly non-committal when asked at his post-fight press conference about when the pair would fight again. There is seemingly deeper interest in an all-British clash with Anthony Joshua, and he also went through multiple camps as he fought Francis Ngannou in October before the February date.
“We’ve punched f*** out of each other for 12 rounds there,” Fury noted during his post-fight press conference. “So we’re going to go home, eat some food, drink a few beers, spend some family time, walk my dog, go to the tip.
“And me and Frank are going to talk about what’s going to happen in the future. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think I’d just do a little bit more of the same.
“Keep my defence a little bit tighter, a bit more focused, and not so much messing around because I was having fun in there. I was playing around, I was hitting him to the body, uppercuts to the head and I thought I was bossing the fight.”