Tyson Fury could be the heading to Saudi Arabia after the Kingdom confirmed they want to stage the historic clash for the undisputed world heavyweight title.
The Saudis paid £66million to bring the rematch between Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk to their country and now they want the big one. Sports Minister HRH Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Saud says they would like to stage WBC champ Fury in a fight for all four major heavyweight belts.
Few believe Fury’s retirement claims when he is calling out Derek Chisora and Prince Abdulaziz says a fight for the undisputed title is exactly the sort of global event the Saudis want to host.
“Why not?” he said. “We are open to that. We’re bidding for a lot of competitions. We want the 2034 Asian Games, which is like the Olympics for Asia. We’ve never hosted it before. We’re bidding for 2027 Asian Cup in football. We’ve won it three times, but we’ve never hosted it. We’re open to a lot of these events.”
Joshua versus Usyk's rematch was slated for the 12,000-seater King Abdullah Sports City Arena and Prince Abdulaziz says ideally they would like the undisputed clash to be outdoors in Riyadh this winter. “In the winter time, if it does happen, I think it will be hosted in Riyadh,” he said. “I think so, but we still haven’t decided on anything. We’re interested. That’s all I can say.”
The Saudis say they want to host big events to inspire their people to take up sport and to boost their fledgling tourist industry. Prince Abdulaziz claims the £66million outlay on Joshua’s rematch with Usyk was worth it because it caught the imagination of locals in Jeddah. “There’s a lot of interest, especially after the first fight we had here with Joshua and with this one, and hopefully in the future if we have an even bigger fight,” he said.“We saw a lot of interest from the UK, people wanting to come in and watch the fight, so there is a lot of buzz.”
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Prince Abdulaziz dismissed accusations the Saudis are engaged in sports washing by hosting events like last night’s and insisted they are sincere about encouraging the growth of sport. He pointed to the increase in boxing since Joshua’s rematch with Andy Ruiz Junior in 2019 as proof that these showpiece occasions do inspire their people.
“A lot has been going on in the Kingdom, specifically with boxing,” he said. “We’ve seen through the numbers from the last fight we had, Joshua-Ruiz 2, that we had six gyms in Saudi that had boxing in them. Boxing isn’t a big sport in Saudi, not like the UK or other countries in the West, and today we have 57 gyms that have boxing in them, do their competitions, training and so on. So there is an increase of 300 per cent in a sport which was not known to Saudis. That’s the benefit we get from all these programmes to develop sport in the community.”
