Tyson Fury has explained his previous statement that he could retire happy without fighting Anthony Joshua or Oleksandr Usyk, declaring that he achieved his main goal in 2015.
The world heavyweight champion's primary ambition in the sport was to dethrone Wladimir Klitschko after his years atop the division, which he did on a special night in Germany in November 2015. He ended up battling depression and losing three years of his career after the victory, struggling to come to terms with the enormity of his win, but returned and beat Deontay Wilder in 2020.
Now, he has no burning desire to face any of the world's top heavyweights, including the current unified title holder Usyk whom he is slated to fight in early next year. The Brit has detailed how when Joshua and Usyk were still amateurs, he was pushing towards his goal of fighting Klitschko, and believes they are just the products of a shifting goalpost in the sport.
"The rest of them had nappies on when I was thinking about Klitschko," Fury told IFL TV's The Fight Within podcast. "They weren't even thought of. Usyk? When did he turn professional and Joshua? 2012, 2013? Way after [the 2012 Olympics], so by the time they were still boxing for an amateur corp I was top five in the world.
"I was fighting world title eliminators against Steve Cunningham at Madison Square Garden. They were hopping around the ring with a vest on, so they were never, ever, ever in my thought process and even when Joshua came to the forefront when I had my time out of the ring, Usyk was never in it.
"Where's he come from? All of a sudden you've got this Ukrainian lad who's come up from the weight below, beat Joshua and taken his acclaim for whatever he built and achieved. He's now lost that and Usyk is a worthy challenger, but five years ago they were nobodies, they weren't even thought of.
"Times change, things change, goalposts move but at the end of the day my goals have always been my goals. My only real goal in boxing was to defeat the long-reigning super champion in Wladimir Klitschko. The second longest-reigning champion in the history of our sport."
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And Fury reckons that while there is major interest for a fight between he and Joshua, the fight will end up on the scrap heap next to his cancelled meetings with David Price and David Haye. Both men were the Manchester native's sworn rivals, but Price lost his last fight before the pair were due to meet, and Haye pulled out of two signed bouts with an injury.
"There's been a couple of massive rivalries that I've built up for years in this country that didn't happen," Fury added. "Joshua's not my first crush, not my first love. David Haye, that was built up for years wasn't it? Massive fight, hated each other. And David Price, they were the ones that got away.
"Price has always been my first love. Massive, massive rivalry, he beat me as an amateur and then we had this massive, massive rivalry all the way into the pros. He was British champion, I was British champion and we were going to fight each other, I think it was about 2013.
"There was an offer on the table, back then it was, like, groundbreaking, we were offered £1million each to fight, I think Frank Moloney may have put that deal together... First I had to fight Steve Cunningham and he had to fight Tony Thompson, I nearly got done off Cunningham and he did get done off Thompson and that finished the rivalry, similar to Joshua."
