Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum says that Tyson Fury’s claims that he will retire after two more fights should be taken with “a grain of salt”.
Fury’s US promoter says that while the WBC heavyweight champion might be genuine when saying he wants to quit, such decisions were “subject to change”.
During an appearance on ITV’s This Morning this week, Fury said that he expected to have a rematch with Deontay Wilder, probably in July, and then a fight with Anthony Joshua, the WBA, WBO, IBO and IBF champion, which would be the only other fight that he wants.
Arum, though, pointed out that Manny Pacquiao, among others, regularly talked about retiring without ever going through with it.
“Manny Pacquiao, I promoted him for ten-and-a-half years and five years into the promotion of Manny Pacquiao, he was telling the press he would only have two more fights and then would retire,” Arum said.
“Well that’s now 14 years later or 13 years later and he’s still fighting. So you have to take with a grain of salt fighters saying they want two more fights and then they’re gone.”
Arum said that Fury still had three fights left on his deal with Top Rank, although if Fury was adamant that he wanted to retire, he would not be held to that.
“I mean I’ve heard that so often,” Arum said. “He will retire when he wants to retire and whether that’s two fights or three fights, I think we have three more on our contract... even though we have a contract, if a fighter wants to retire early, he retires early.
“He will retire when he wants to retire and without giving any credibility to the fact that he’s only going to do two fights and retire. Maybe he believes that, I’m sure he believes it, but that’s subject to change.”