If Tyson Fury were to come out of retirement, the WBC has opened a route for him to return straight to world-level competition.
Fury, a former WBC heavyweight world champion, would be sanctioned to fight Agit Kabayel for the WBC’s interim belt if he came out of retirement.
The 36-year-old has teased a return to the ring on social media, posting a video of himself walking down the tunnel at Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium with a reference to 2025 and a message of ‘Did you miss me?’.
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Kabayel won that strap with an impressive victory over Zhilei Zhang when he rose from the canvas to knock out Zhang with a body shot inside six rounds.
Germany’s Kabayel is an obvious candidate to be a mandatory challenger for the full WBC world title, one of the belts held by unified champion Oleksandr Usyk.
But that mandatory shot is unlikely to be called in the near future.
WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman told Sky Sports: “We have been very flexible and supportive of the undisputed concept. We fought very hard to get to undisputed [at heavyweight] and we did not impose a mandatory on Fury in order to allow him to fight Usyk and we made it clear that the winner would do the rematch without any mandatory.”
