Is this Tyson Fury's next opponent?
Tyson "The Gypsy King" Fury will be making his comeback on June 9th at the Manchester MEN Arena, after two and a half years in the wilderness since he out-pointed Wladimir "Dr Steel Hammer" Klitschko to win the WBO, WBA, IBF and The Ring World Heavyweight titles.
Fury was eventually either stripped or vacated all of his titles, without ever defending them in the ring, due to various injuries and failed drugs tests. As well as his own personal problems, which included cocaine abuse and a battle with depression.
Since announcing his comeback, we've had two press conferences from Fury and his new promoter Frank Warren, but as of yet his opponent for June 9th has not been confirmed. In the last few days, the rumor that has found its way into the UK press is that he will be facing a little known cruiser-weight, Sefer Seferi, who is from Albania but fights out of Switzerland.
At first glance, the obscure Seferi (23-1-0) seems to have decent enough numbers, but on closer inspection we can see that he has only beaten 3 opponents in his career that didn't have a losing record.
The only recognised name on Sefer Seferi's record is Manuel Charr from 2016, with Seferi losing a wide decision on that occasion. Manuel Charr is the current WBA "Regular" Heavyweight Champion but back then he was still campaigning at cruiser-weight.
If Frank Warren has matched Fury against Seferi, who at 39 years of age isn't even a recognised Heavyweight. It tells me that they aren't really sure yet what level Fury is going to be able to compete at after so long away from the sport. During which time, he ballooned up in weight to as heavy as 28 stone by his own reckoning at one point.
It reminds me of David Hayes 'comeback' in 2016, after he had been out for over 3 years due to a career threatening shoulder injury. Haye lined up two club fighters, Mark De Mori and Arnold Gjergjaj, because he didn't want to take any risks after coming back from being seriously injured. But the "Haye Maker" rather predictably bulldozed through both of those no-hopers in the first couple of rounds. Which might have looked good for the crowd, but didn't tell us anything about the level Haye was still capable of operating at.
Haye then went on to a big money domestic fight against the under-rated Tony Bellew, who he sorely underestimated and the former undisputed cruiser-weight world champion was really put to the test over 11 hard rounds. Before Haye's corner threw in the towel when Bellew knocked Haye straight out of the ring.. Haye was in obvious difficulties after the early exchanges and it was later confirmed he had fought most of the fight with a busted achilles. Which at least showed a lot of heart from him, even if losing to Bellew was still a massive upset at the time.
From what we hear, Tyson Fury has been in semi-serious training mode for at least 6 months now, but it has really been more of a fat camp for the most part to shed all those extra pounds. Latest evidence seems to suggest he is a lot closer to his natural fighting weight now at around 19 stone, with still about 6 weeks to go until June 9th. Fury has also been sparring recently with the likes of Polish Heavyweight Mariuz Wach and British level contender Dave Allen and is starting to look in pretty good shape.
But if Fury and his team were more confident about his conditioning and state of mind, I think his comeback fight should have been against the American, Shannon "The Cannon" Briggs. Briggs has had his own troubles of late and has been inactive like Fury. He is also much older at 46 years of age to Fury's 29. But Briggs is still more of a legitimate comeback opponent than Sefer Seferi for a former heavyweight champion of the world who still has pretensions of being the true lineal champion.
Shannon Briggs has a lot of miles on the clock as of 2018. But he has been fighting at world level for at least two decades. He is a former heavyweight and lineal world champion in his own right. His colourful personality and media profile would also mean the fight would be a much bigger sell than against the little known Sefer Seferi. Who very few of the hardcore, never mind casual, boxing fraternity in the UK will have ever heard of..
Fury seems to be doing things at his own pace however, which of course is his prerogative after so much time out of the game. But hopefully the rumour that he will be facing Briggs in the second fight of his comeback is correct. Briggs seems to think so, he has been saying as much recently on social media and may have already been offered a contract.
Tyson Fury and Frank Warren have been selling tickets in Manchester for this home town comeback on the pitch that "The Gypsy King" is the rightful Heavyweight champion of the World, being still undefeated and never having lost any of his titles in the ring.
They say that the politics of boxing has worked against Fury, who is an outspoken personality who has made a lot of controversial statements over the years which have damaged his public image. They also acknowledge Fury's personal demons and insist he will now simply take his time to get a few fights under his belt before challenging current unified champ Anthony Joshua perhaps in 2019 to reclaim his throne.
The Joshua v Fury fight is definitely the most lucrative that can be made in British boxing right now, and would easily become the biggest ever boxing event between two British fighters in the history of the UK. If only in terms of pure financial numbers and the amount of attention it would also attract world-wide.
Anthony Joshua has always said he wants to face Tyson Fury to settle the matter once and for all, and the two promoters Eddie Hearn (Joshua) and his bitter rival Frank Warren (Fury) would hopefully be able to put their enmities towards each other aside to make the fight because of the amount of money it would bring in for all concerned.
But Fury's choice of opponent for his comeback makes me suspect he might have another route in mind back to a world title. The only thing that stands out about Sefer Seferi is that, as mentioned above, he has Manuel Charr on his record who is a Syrian, former cruiser-weight contender based in Germany, who currently holds the WBA "Regular" Heavyweight title.
Confusingly, these days the boxing sanctioning organisations often have multiple belt holders in each weight class who each theoretically hold a piece of the title. This helps them make more money from sanctioning fees but it also devalues the title with so many 'champions' floating around.
This has led in recent years, to a lot more value being put on fighters who unify different belts, as well as moving up different weight divisions to win multiple titles. Just holding one alphabet belt doesn't mean much these days, especially to the average boxing fan.
Once a fighter gets to a certain level, their achievements usually speak for themselves and they don't really need titles at all, and can do good PPV numbers on the back of their name alone, as we have seen with fighters such as Canelo Alvarez and Manny Pacquaio.
Tyson Fury, because of his status as a former unified champion, doesn't really need a alphabet belt to make the fight with Joshua or anyone else. Even if Manuel Charr holds one piece of the WBA title, Anthony Joshua is also the WBA "Super" Heavyweight champion and most people would say is the true champion in that division.
But if Tyson Fury and his management could engineer the match-up and beat Manuel Charr, who Fury has been linked with in the past, he would be able to say he is once again "World" champion. This would be easily blown up into more of an achievement than it actually is, because of all Fury's well documented personal problems and long time in exile.
It would certainly be a good story for the media. Which if anything would also build up the Joshua mega fight even more..
If for any reason Joshua v Fury can't be made, perhaps due to boxing politics or money issues, Fury would still have a paper title he could leverage until the fight could be made.
He could also go his own way in the mean-time and defend the belt, maybe against the likes of Tony Bellew or David Haye depending on who wins the Haye-Bellew 2 rematch on May 5th?