Boxers Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua have resumed fight talks

Two of the most famous British heavyweights – Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua – for the second time in the past few months, they are trying to organize a fight with each other. Such a fight will undoubtedly arouse great interest, but it would still have been a real super hit a couple of years ago, when both boxers owned champion titles. Now the match looks just not the worst replacement for Fury’s unexpectedly broken fight with the Ukrainian Oleksandr Usyk, who defeated Joshua twice and took three titles from him.

A number of media resources reported on the start of negotiations related to the organization of the fight between the two famous British boxers – such as the BBC, ESPN and others. The information was confirmed by their direct participants. Tyson Fury on Instagram (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) wrote that, in his opinion, this is a fight “that everyone wants to see.” And George Warren, the son of Frank Warren, the head of Fury’s promotional company Queensberry Promotions, and one of its executives, even clarified the conditions under which the match was proposed. We are talking about the distribution of the prize fund in a ratio of 60 to 40 in favor of Tyson Fury, who, unlike his potential opponent, owns the World Boxing Council (WBC) championship belt.

Warren Jr. claims that Anthony Joshua’s team has already been sent a draft contract for the fight. It is supposed to take place in September this year at London’s Wembley Stadium.

Anthony Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn was a bit more reserved in his comments regarding the talks. In an interview iFL TV he, for example, refused to call a letter sent to him by Queensberry Promotions an “official offer” for a fight, preferring the less obliging phrase “got in touch”. At the same time, Hearn admitted that he promised George Warren in a personal conversation that he would “love” to discuss an option with him if he seemed preferable to others, for example, with a duel against American Deontay Wilder in December in Saudi Arabia.

The fight between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua is sure to generate huge interest. But a real boxing hit, an event of exceptional significance, he would have been, whatever one may say, a couple of years ago.

As a matter of fact, at the beginning of this decade it seemed that such a match was simply inevitable. Moreover, already has been achieved a preliminary agreement that the hugely popular Fury and Joshua, who owned three champion titles at once – the International Boxing Federation (IBF), the World Boxing Association (WBA) and the World Boxing Organization (WBO), will fight each other for the status of an absolute champion peace. But the agreed scenario was spoiled by Oleksandr Usyk, who moved from the first heavyweight (up to 90.7 kg) to heavyweight: Anthony Joshua had to defeat him in order to reach Tyson Fury. The Ukrainian twice, in 2021 and 2022, coped with the British opponent and took away his belts.

Last fall, Anthony Joshua was already trying to negotiate with Tyson Fury about the fight. But then the negotiations ended in nothing, which, of course, did not surprise anyone.

Experts viewed them as nothing more than a cunning maneuver with which Tyson Fury is trying to force Oleksandr Usyk to quickly make a decision about a duel in which all four significant belts would be at stake – much more resonant and expensive. Indeed, it soon became clear that the two champions were in active contact, and instead of Joshua, Fury’s opponent in the “warm-up” December battle was the much less rated British veteran Derek Chisora.

However, in March, when the managers and promoters of Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk already, in fact, announced the forthcoming blockbuster fight, he sensationally, for reasons that are not entirely clear, broke, forcing the boxers to look for a replacement for him. Usyk actually already has it. WBA authorized his duel against his so-called regular champion, yet another British heavyweight, Daniel Dubois. The promoters of the Ukrainian won the auction for the right to host it. According to Oleksandr Krasyuk, Usyk’s manager, the match is planned to take place in Wroclaw, Poland, on August 12.

The story of the continuation of Tyson Fury’s career turned out to be more complicated. He himself said that he wanted to meet either the American Andy Ruiz or the Chinese Zhang Zhilei. But Ruiz, according to Fury, asked for too much a fee – $ 20 million. And Zhang Zhilei became unavailable when Fury’s compatriot Joe Joyce, who lost to him, activated the rematch clause in the contract. These events made Tyson Fury reminisce about Anthony Joshua, who returned to the ring after losing to Usyk with a not-so-convincing victory over American Jermain Franklin in April.

Alexey Dospekhov