After a stellar night under the Wembley arch for the homecoming of Tyson Fury, fans leave with a strange feeling that they may never see the world heavyweight champion fight again. The Gypsy King will surely give fans a concrete decision in the coming months but the feeling is that tonight may have been the last dance for one of the sport's great entertainers.
In all sports, athletes will dream of bowing out in the style that Fury has done so tonight with a one punch knockout victory in the sixth round, maintaining not only an unbeaten record but retaining both his lineal and WBC heavyweight titles in front of 94,000 people at the iconic Wembley Stadium. However, for those who have followed his career, there will always be a sense of wonder as to whether he might have done something even bigger.
With all due respect to Dillian Whyte, who is the deserved number one WBC contender, there will always be the lingering thought that a fight against Anthony Joshua could have been the highlight of the 33-year-old's career. Perhaps it would have been best to pursue such a bout when both fighters were undefeated but despite just a year's difference in age, a fight could never be made with both fighters' peaks coming at different times.
Tyson Fury vs Dillian Whyte highlights and full fight replay - how to watch
With this in mind, even a fight against Oleksandr Usyk might be an even more appropriate full stop for his career - with a unification of the heavyweight division, which is something that has not been done since Lennox Lewis did so in 2000. While Whyte is one of the top heavyweights in the world, for a champion such as Fury it may mean more for his legacy to beat a champion such as Joshua or Usyk.
That said, it is not for us to tell a father of six how many more punches he should take in a professional career which has already spanned for 14 years. All we can say is that there will be 94,000 people walking back to Wembley Park underground station tonight with a bittersweet feeling that one of the sport's most engaging and popular characters will be bowing out.
These feelings will be reverberated around the world of sport, with Fury an immensely popular figure on the other side of the Atlantic and around the world. Maybe fans will get the chance to see the Wythenshawe-born fighter enter the ring in the sanitised world of WWE, but the question remains as to whether that would be a waste of such a remarkable world class talent.
