Oleksandr Usyk's team had already begun talking about a prospective mandatory title defence against Daniel Dubois while negotiations were breaking down over a fight with Tyson Fury.
The Ukrainian is the unified WBO, IBF and WBA super champion at heavyweight, and was pushing for an undisputed bout with WBC title holder Fury at Wembley Stadium on April 29. He took an absurd 70/30 purse split that would have amounted to a huge $40million pay cut in order to get the bout over the line, but talks still fell apart at the last minute.
And he is now expected to be slapped with mandatory challenges from the WBA, whose regular belt is held by Dubois, and the IBF whose challenger is Filip Hrgovic. Understanding the likelihood of that situation, Usyk's team began discussing the possibility of a fight with the London native, who is also promoted by Frank Warren.
“I won’t jump in the emails to read out our conversations, but we started to discuss the Dubois fight with George Warren several days before Tyson went out on Instagram," Usyk's promoter Alex Krassyuk told iD Boxing after the bout broke down at the end of last month.
"And no one knew, it was his own decision, he didn’t inform Queensberry about that. So he just jumps in, bluffing. Usyk calls his bluff, now he has to keep his word, but if you don’t want to keep your word you will try to find the way out. What’s how we take this situation.”
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Krassyuk also told talkSPORT at last night's Anthony Joshua vs Jermaine Franklin fight that he has begun negotiations with George Warren for a bout between Usyk and Dubois. He specifically made a trip to London - the latest in a string of UK visits - in order to work towards that fight to unify the WBA's titles.
"Regarding whether we had any talks, for sure we did," he said. "That was actually the reason for my coming here. I'm talking to many, many important people in boxing. I started with George Warren, we are discussing the Dubois fight right now."
The issue for Dubois could be an injury that almost cost him his belt back in December against Kevin Lerena on the undercard of Fury's trilogy bout with Derek Chisora. He was dropped three times in the first round but rallied to win, and has since been recovering from a torn ACL, which is unlikely to be better in time for a May bout.
