PROFESSIONAL heavyweight boxing has entered a spiral of decline and is fast becoming a parody of itself. None of its main protagonists are signing to fight one another for various reasons –mostly to do with disagreements over purse and PPV splits, with the result that social media rather than the ring is currently where the division resides.

Since his last underwhelming outing against a ring-weary Derek Chisora last December, WBC champion Tyson Fury has been inactive while continuously announcing upcoming fights against everyone from Anthony Joshua to Andy Ruiz Jr to Oleksandr Usyk, and even at points against the UFC’s former heavyweight champion, Francis Ngannou, and also current UFC heavyweight champ Jon Jones. 

All of it has come to naught over disagreements about venues, money and purse splits, leading to the extraordinary situation that there is no top heavyweight fight scheduled to take place this summer. Things are so bad where Fury is concerned that his most recent appearance in the news was over how he took his dad to a luxury car dealership to try and buy him a Rolls Royce which his father turned down.