Tyson Fury claims UFC has offered him ‘hybrid fight’ with Jon Jones
Tyson Fury has claimed that the UFC has offered him a ‘hybrid fight’ with Jon Jones.
WBC heavyweight boxing champion Fury has been linked with Jones, who holds the UFC heavyweight title, in recent weeks, since claiming that he would win a fight with the American.
Fury, 34, has also long been linked with Francis Ngannou – Jones’s predecessor as UFC heavyweight champion – and the Briton has now addressed the chances of either bout materialising.
“I’ve been in talks with Francis Ngannou for a hybrid fight,” Fury said on a Twitter Spaces stream on Friday (16 June). “There’s talks of me and Jon Jones doing a hybrid fight, as we talk right now. I received an offer from the UFC yesterday.
“So, you never know what’s going to happen. The future’s bright for sure, and there’s a lot of options out there.
“It seems, at the moment, I’m struggling to get an actual boxing opponent. Mauricio Sulaiman, the president of the WBC (World Boxing Council), did an interview on a podcast recently, and he said: ‘Tyson’s a victim of his own success. He’s that good, people don’t want to fight him. They’d rather fight someone else.’
“That’s what I’m experiencing right now. I think I’ve called out everybody in the top 15 in the heavyweight division in the last six months, and I’m still without an opponent, as we speak today.”
Fury last fought in December, retaining the WBC heavyweight title with a TKO win against Derek Chisora, whom he had already beaten twice in the past.
The “Gypsy King” was then in talks to fight unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, but negotiations fell apart in March.
Meanwhile, Jones last fought in March, returning to the UFC after a three-year absence to move up a weight class and fight for the vacant heavyweight belt. The 35-year-old submitted Ciryl Gane in the first round to claim the gold.
Jones is a former multiple-time light-heavyweight champion in the UFC, and he is seen by many fans and pundits as the greatest fighter in mixed martial arts history.
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