NOW that UK Anti-Doping has released Tyson Fury from the threat of a ban, there is another obvious fight to make, the former champion against the current heavyweight champion. Anthony Joshua vs Tyson Fury would be the biggest event in British and world boxing. But Eddie Hearn, the promoter of Anthony Joshua, could see the big fight failing to materialise.
“There are only two reasons it doesn’t happen. The first is that Tyson Fury has lost all sense of reality for a deal for that fight with AJ. He wants a lot more than a 50-50 split, which is a joke,” Hearn told ESPN. “I’ve talked to Tyson Fury numerous times about it and I don’t know if he was having a laugh when he was saying it’s a 50-50 split or not, but we’re not in a position to talk about that fight anyway for a while.”
“Second reason is that he can’t get himself into a physical condition which is good enough to fight AJ,” Hearn explained. “I expect the Board will give him back his licence in January or February. He’s talking about fighting again in April but it will be realistically May because he has got a good six or seven stones to lose which is a lot of weight, but he’s training at the moment which is a good sign.
“It’s one thing doing 40 minutes on the cross trainer — I can do that — but it’s another doing a proper camp, that’s when we will find out if he can hold up. He went over on his ankle in one camp [in June 2016, causing rematch with Wladimir Klitschko to be scrapped] and stopped boxing.”
But Fury or not, Joshua will have a big 2018. “He will have to be in some epic fights,” Hearn predicted.
“Anthony needs to be in relevant fights against the likes of Joseph Parker and Deontay Wilder and potentially Tyson Fury at the back end of next year. We’re not looking for Anthony to have easy fights.”
