Tyson Fury has pulled out of the heavyweight title defence against former champion Wladimir Klitschko which was scheduled for the Manchester Evening News Arena on July 9th.
Message to all my fans. About the fight.#willbebackonsoon. 🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀 @peterfury @hughiefury… https://t.co/rz0N0EWWtC
— TYSON FURY (@Tyson_Fury) June 24, 2016
The 'Gypsy King' suffered a sprained ankle in training and announced the news via social media.
Hey guys. I've got a little bit of bad news for you all. About ten days ago I was running up in the Lake District and I went over on my ankle, sprained my ankle. I’ve been to hospital and had x-rays and MRI scans and all that stuff. They said it’s not broken but it’s badly sprained [and I have to] keep off it for six, seven weeks.
I tried to still train a bit [and] had a second opinion a week later and had the same advice, so the fight will be being postponed. I’m sorry to my fans, to let you all down but injuries do happen and it is one of them things. My apologies to everybody who has booked dates and whatever but the fight will be on as soon as possible. That’s all I know at this moment but the fight is still going ahead, as soon as the ankle better we will reschedule. Thank you all and god bless.
As you can tell from the images below, it looks like it was a painful injury.
Bad news everyone:- Tyson fight with Klitschko has to be re arranged due to ankle injury- pic.twitter.com/v5Dep1NgcO
— Asif Vali (@asifvali) June 24, 2016
Various different media sources are claiming the the bout will be rescheduled for October 8th or October 29th in the same Manchester venue.
Fury upset the odds last December by handing Klitschko his first defeat in more than 11 years, thoroughly outboxing the Ukrainian to a unanimous decision in Germany.
Fury has maintained that he will retire as soon as he loses the title and if Klitschko is unable to win the championship back, it's likely that Fury will have a series of contenders lining up to attempt to dethrone him - Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder among them.
