Tyson Fury is the reason that Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk hasn't happened yet.
That's according to heavyweight Otto Wallin, who spoke frankly about Fury in an interview with Rekatochklart this week.
"Now, I'm not involved in these negotiations that he's dealing with, of course, but if you look from the outside, it seems like Fury is playing around too much and making everything more difficult," Wallin said.
“He (Fury) is surely difficult to work with; he contradicts himself all the time on Instagram and in interviews. To me, it seems like Fury is the one who's the problem. Usyk, whom he was supposed to face, already has a match; he's going to fight Danny Dubois in August. Fury still hasn't boxed – he fought against Derek Chisora in December, he could have easily had at least one fight already and defended his title.
“But he hasn’t. He keeps saying that he has tried to set up fights with everyone, but no one wants to fight him. I don’t think anyone believes him when he says that. He seems very difficult to work with if I’m being honest. I think he’s the one throwing a spanner in the works for himself.”
Wallin, 32, has previously stepped into the ring with Fury, losing by unanimous decision to the Brit in 2019 in Las Vegas. The Swede claims that he had agreed to spar with Fury in the lead-up to a potential Fury vs. Usyk unification bout fight last spring, but as negotiations soured between the two heavyweight champions the sparring idea fizzled as well.
“A few months ago, I actually posted on Instagram: 'Come on, Fury, it's time to face me again.' He was a bit upset, and then we went back and forth in DMs," Wallin said.
“It was when he was talking about facing (Oleksandr) Usyk – Fury reached out and said I should come over and spar with him for a few weeks. I was about to do that, but the match with Usyk didn't materialize.”
Wallin pointed to the widely-reported purse split between Fury and Usyk as a way for the WBC heavyweight champion to avoid facing the Ukrainian, who holds the WBA (Super), IBF, WBO and IBO heavyweight titles.
“It’s definitely a tactic for some boxers to set their fee too high," he said. "As long as fights aren’t mandatory, it’s possible to fend off potential challengers by demanding an unrealistic high fee to fight.”
For Fury, Wallin believes that the WBC champion is more interested in taking the easier way out than trying to unify the heavyweight belts. The Swede feels that this is also the reason why it's improbable that he would ever get a chance at redemption against Fury, who is the only man to defeat him in his career so far.
"As long as he isn’t forced to take certain fights, it will be difficult to get a rematch against him planned," Wallin said. "I really want to, but he can choose whoever he wants. He’ll pick fights where he can make the most money with as low risk as possible. That could be fighting against the likes of Jon Jones and Francis Ngannou.”