Tyson Fury reveals career plans following Francis Ngannou, Oleksandr Usyk fights

Though he talks a lot about life after boxing, Tyson Fury often finds himself back in the ring. This time, however, he's toying with a concrete number of fights before retiring for good.

Ahead of his Oct. 28 bout with former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou, the WBC heavyweight champion told ESPN's Mike Coppinger that he's hoping to sign another 10-fight deal after his fight with Ngannou and a contracted heavyweight unification bout with Oleksandr Usyk. He elaborated more on why retirement doesn't suit him just yet:

"What else is there? I retire, plenty of money, plenty of achievement, whatever — 35 [years old]. What am I going to do? ... This makes me f---ing happy fighting. This is all I've ever done and all that's ever made me happy. So it'd be stupid now to walk away from it when I'm making millions of dollars and getting loads of joy from it as well."

Fury already hung up the gloves once before, though most observers certainly didn't believe that retirement was genuine because of how frequently he hinted at walking away in the past. Even the Netflix reality show based on his family that began streaming over the summer often wrestled with the subject until the lucrative opportunity to fight Ngannou sprung up.

Considering that champions and contending fighters of the highest level fight every six months, at best, a new 10-fight deal would take Fury into his early 40s. Will his incumbent promoter, Top Rank, keep him with the understanding that such a deal won't come cheap and could present all sorts of roadblocks as he gets older? Could rival promoters such as Premier Boxing Champions or Golden Boy swoop in with the promises of the right fights? Perhaps a homecoming of sorts would be in order, and he could sign with Matchroom, which is the most prominent U.K.-based promotion, and finally have the headline fight Britons have waited for between Fury and former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. 

There are certainly plenty of options in front of the undefeated "Gypsy King," though the business of boxing has a major question to answer. 

One also has to wonder what the economics of boxing will look like now that Showtime will be out of the game at the end of 2023. While there are boundless options for fighters to be seen around the world and get paid for it, the end of Showtime Sports — along with HBO's departure from the fight game in 2018 — means that there's one fewer source for the multimillion-dollar pay-per-view fights that shaped the sport for the last four decades. Though Top Rank is the promoter of choice for ESPN, Fury has to be observing his impending promotional free agency with a slightly wary eye.