Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder reach agreement on fight

Two former world heavyweight boxing champions, Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder, have reached an agreement to fight. According to ESPN sources, the fighters will fight on March 9, 2024 in Riyadh. The winner will have excellent chances to fight for the title of absolute world champion in the next fight. He must decide on February 17 next year in the confrontation between Tyson Fury and Alexander Usik. However, both Joshua and Wilder will have to go through one more round of tests before they start thinking not even about a championship fight, but about meeting each other. Both will perform on December 23 as part of a boxing show in Saudi Arabia, and both face very difficult opponents. Joshua will face strong fighter Otto Wallin, and Wilder will face another former world champion, Joseph Parker.

TV channel ESPN citing his sources, he reported that an agreement had been reached to hold one of the most interesting battles of recent times. Two former world champions – 34-year-old Briton Anthony Joshua and 38-year-old American Deontay Wilder (the first, at the peak of his career, owned three belts at once: the International Boxing Federation (IBF), the World Boxing Association (WBA) and the World Boxing Organization (WBO), the second was the champion of the World Boxing Council (WBC)) – agreed on the terms of the fight with each other.

It is stated that the fight will take place on March 9, 2024 in Riyadh. However, as Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn told ESPN, “no contracts have been signed yet, negotiations are ongoing.”

It is likely that neither ESPN’s sources nor Mr. Hearn are lying when they talk about agreeing on all the details, on the one hand, and the absence of signed contracts, on the other. In fact, it would be even strange if the boxers signed the documents now. After all, very soon, on December 23, both will have difficult fights, which will take place as part of a big boxing show in Riyadh. And a misfire by Joshua or Wilder will make their March meeting virtually meaningless, depriving it, even if informally, of the status of a fight of contenders for the right to fight for the title of absolute world champion.

Joshua will meet Otto Wallin in Riyadh, Wilder will fight Joseph Parker. Both the 33-year-old Swede and the 31-year-old New Zealander could well cause a lot of problems for their opponents. Wallin, who defeated the famous Russian heavyweight Murat Gassiev in September in a bitter fight, has only one defeat in his career. And even then it is rather honorable – in 2019, Wallin caused a lot of problems for Tyson Fury. As for Parker, his resume includes many fights with elite opponents, and in the middle of the previous decade he even won the WBO championship belt, losing it in 2018 when he crossed paths with Joshua. Yes, both Joshua and Wilder are considered favorites in their meetings. But it is still impossible to rule out that one of them will misfire.

Here you can remember how current WBC world champion Tyson Fury suffered two months ago, when he also expected to have an easy and profitable fight against Francis Ngannou, who decided to change his career vector and move from mixed martial arts to boxing. He’s his won by the judges’ decision, but at the same time he was knocked down, received serious injuries and greatly spoiled the reputation of the strongest heavyweight on the planet.

“Everyone really asks us why we should fight such a serious opponent like Wallin before meeting Wilder,” said Eddie Hearn. “In general, this fight was offered to us by the Saudi side, they really want it, and Anthony has never refused fights. Wallin has been on the list of possible contenders to fight Joshua for a couple of years now. The fact that he is left-handed held him back. Not an ideal preparation for the Wilder fight, but let’s hope for the best.”

If there are no sensations at the December show in Riyadh, then the prospect of three superfights in the most prestigious weight category looms in 2024.

The first is a match for the title of absolute world champion, in which Fury and the Ukrainian boxer, holder of the IBF, WBO and WBA belts Alexander Usik are scheduled to meet on February 17, followed by a meeting between Joshua and Wilder, and then a meeting of the winners of the above matches.

Alexander Petrov