Tyson Fury says he “needs to fight” fellow British heavyweight Anthony Joshua before retiring.
Negotiations over a potential fight between WBC champion Fury and former unified champion Joshua’s teams fell apart in September.
Instead, Fury, 34, goes defend his title against Derek Chisora in London on December 3.
“I don’t think I can retire today because I need this fight against Joshua,” Fury said on the High Performance Podcast.
“We’ve been trying to make this fight for years. It’s the fight people want to see. It’s the fight I want to see as a boxing fan.”
Talk of a potential fight between Fury and Joshua arose after the 33-year-old lost in a second fight to Oleksandr Usyk. in August.
Shortly after the fight, Fury challenged Joshua to a fight via social media video, to which Joshua agreed, saying he would be “ready in December”.
Negotiations ended with both sides blaming each other that the fight did not materialize.
Fury’s meeting with Briton Chisora, 38, at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will be the third meeting between the two, with Fury winning in 2011 and 2014.
Fury won the WBC title, alongside The Ring belt he later vacated, in his second of three fights against Deontay Wilder in 2020.
At the time, Joshua held the remaining titles in the heavyweight division, prior to his first defeat by Usyk 2021.
Over the past year, British heavyweights Joe Joyce and Daniel Dubois have also picked up wins in the division, with Dubois defeating Trevor Bryan in June and Joyce defeating Joseph Parker in September.
Despite all the potential fights for Fury in 2023, he says Joshua remains at the top of his priorities.
“For four or five years there’s been this three-headed monster: me, Wilder, Joshua,” Fury said.
“Joshua and Wilder were killed, and I’m the last one standing. All of a sudden you’ve got new people coming in now – Joe Joyce, Daniel Dubois, Usyk’s gate crashed the party.
“Now there’s a load of new blood that wasn’t there five years ago and it’s like, ‘Can you beat this person?’
“But I think it would be a travesty of absolute death if Joshua and I weren’t fighting at that time.”
