Lindsey Tucker, championships chairman at the IBF, told the BBC: “It’s true he’s been stripped of his IBF belt”.
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The IBF contract for the fight in November stipulated that the victor would need to face Vyacheslav Glazkov as a mandatory challenger. Even if Fury does beat Klitschko a second time, his days as a world champion would seem to be numbered because contenders and champions like Deontay Wilder want his scalp something fierce.
The 31-year-old Ukrainian Glazkov has a 21-1 record.
Fury, who became the WBA, WBO and IBF champion after beating Wladimir Klitschko last month, has been accused of expressing homophobic views.
A petition calling for Mr Fury to be removed from the 12-person shortlist for Sports Personality of the Year has now received 80,000 signatures.
In the past week, he has been quoted as saying Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill “slaps up good,” before adding that “a woman’s best place is in the kitchen and on her back”.
Tyson Fury’s eventful reign as world heavyweight champion continued on Tuesday with a hate crime accusation and, in a separate issue, the removal of one of his titles. “He doesn’t hate anybody”.
Fury has caused outrage in some quarters for being nominated alongside the likes of Andy Murray and Lewis Hamilton for the prestigious BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, something plenty of people have made it known they are against.
Fury has responded to the controversy with a series of sometimes conflicting comments in media interviews and on Twitter.
Fury compared homosexuality to paedophilia in a Mail on Sunday interview, and said that they signalled the arrival of the devil. “I didn’t say I had a problem with homosexuals or abortionists or paedophiles, I didn’t say I’m with it or against it, I just stated what I am taught through my scriptures”.
Broadcaster Alice Arnold stepped into the ring to object the boxers nomination, via a Guardian opinion piece titled: “Tyson Fury should remember he’s a role model when he opens his mouth”.
Joshua said: “You’ve got kids to grandmas listening to you so I think there’s a time and a place to say certain things. I can actually say I don’t hate anybody”, he told the BBC on Monday.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) confirmed that the force was investigating a report of hate crime for the comments in which Fury said legalising of abortion, paedophilia and homosexuality signified a kind of Old Testament-derived reckoning.
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“Who would have thought in the ’50s and ’60s that those first two would be legalised?”
