Usyk's promoter questions Fury's willingness to fight

Oleksandr Usyk's team doubt Tyson Fury ever wanted to fight the Ukrainian after talks over a heavyweight title clash broke down.

Usyk's promoter Alexander Krassyuk raised the question after the two camps were unable to compromise on the financial details of the fight, such as any potential rematch purse split.

The pair were due to meet on April 29 at Wembley Stadium, having previously agreed to a 70-30 purse split in favour of Fury.

Usyk's manager Egis Klimas confirmed his client had pulled out after seemingly growing frustrated at Fury's continued demands.

In an interview with Sky Sports, Krassyuk said: "The Usyk side pulled out of further negotiations as the Fury side never had enough [and wanted] to pull everything and all rights to their side. 

"I don't want to go into details as all negotiations were confidential but I will tell you one thing, when a fighter doesn't want to fight he overprices himself knowing the fight won't happen.

"They most likely forgot that Usyk is holding the majority of belts in the heavyweight division and Tyson just has one."

Fury holds the WBC heavyweight title, after his trilogy victory over Deontay Wilder, whereas Usyk has the WBA Super, IBF, and WBO belts after twice defeating Anthony Joshua.

Krassyuk added: "They claimed Tyson is a face and must have all the rights but look at statistics on pay-per-view with Tyson vs Derek Chisora and Usyk vs Chisora and then tell me who is who?"

Last year, Fury's fight with Chisora reportedly reached 500,000 pay-per-viewPPV sales, under half those supposedly made for when Usyk fought the Finchley slugger in 2020.

An April 1 deadline for the unification showdown to be agreed had been set by WBA president Gilberto Mendoza and this latest setback appears likely to kill any chance of the event being set before that date.