JOSHUA v FURY – WILL IT EVER HAPPEN? After Tyson Fury demolished Deontay Wilder in Las Vegas, everyone’s attention turned to a massive undisputed clash between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury.
Deontay Wilder evoked his rematch clause; thus delaying the biggest boxing match we would have seen for decades but it seemed likely that we could see Joshua v Fury towards the end of the 2020.
Clearly given the situation, Joshua v Pulev and the rematch between Fury and Wilder are going to be pushed back. Joshua v Pulev was pencilled in for June but there’s talk that it could be pushed back until July already. But today we had news that Fury v Wilder could be pushed back to as late as October.
As Fury v Wilder 3 hasn’t been officially announced yet, no date has been set. We only have rumours to go off. But let’s say they do push the date back to October. That leaves us with a huge number of issues for Joshua v Fury to go ahead.
Joshua will likely fight Pulev months before that, and is unlikely to just wait around for Fury. Why would he hold up his career? Added to this is he has to fight another mandatory. That mandatory, at the moment, is Oleksandr Usyk who is scheduled to fight Dereck Chisora which is also up in the air given the situation.
Fury v Wilder only happening as late as October would mean that it’s likely Joshua would be forced to fight the winner of Usyk v Chisora before then trying to set up the massive clash with Fury. And then we bump into the issue with Dillian Whyte and the WBC.
As things stand now, Whyte becomes the mandatory for winner of Fury v Wilder in February 2021. Whyte has been through hell to get a shot and basically the agreed deal is he fights for the belt by February; or they at least agree to fight at a later date by then. So when does that give time for Joshua v Fury – if indeed Fury v Wilder happens in October as the rumours say.
Unfortunately for boxing fans we might have to wait years to see Joshua v Fury. Both camps would love to fight each other, but it seems outside circumstances will affect the fight happening. We will see both sets of fans say that the other fighter doesn’t want the fight – as we always see in boxing. But it’s hard to understand why neither would want to fight. Joshua has always wanted to be undisputed champ and Fury believes he can beat Joshua, add in the money and glory and it’s easy to see why both want the fight.
We seen a similar window of opportunity pass when Deontay Wilder turned down a reported 100M dollars to sign with DAZN and fight Joshua when neither had a mandatory commitment. That window passed and as we all know, the fight didn’t happen. You have to fear the same will happen with Joshua v Fury now. The window was the end of this year, and it has possibly already been closed.
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