Anthony Joshua has signed a deal to fight fellow former world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, Eddie Hearn has announced.<\/p>\n
Joshua, who has not fought since he was a passenger in a fatal car crash in December, will first have a comeback fight against Kristian Prenga in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on 25 July.<\/p>\n
Fury and Joshua – both two-time world champions – have carried British boxing on the global stage for more than a decade, yet despite years of negotiations and false starts, the fight has never materialised.<\/p>\n
But promoter Hearn posted on social media on Monday that the long-awaited fight was “signed, sealed and delivered”. <\/p>\n
“As I said, the landlord will collect his rent. That is certain,” Joshua said about the fight.<\/p>\n
Joshua, 36, must first get past unknown 35-year-old Albanian Prenga – who boasts a record of 20 wins, all by stoppage, and one loss.<\/p>\n
The British fighter’s most recent appearance in the ring was against Jake Paul in December.<\/p>\n
Later that month Joshua’s driver crashed in Nigeria, with two members of the boxer’s team being killed.<\/p>\n
“It’s no secret I’ve taken some time to consolidate and rebuild to be ready for stepping back into the ring and today is the next step on that journey,” Joshua said. <\/p>\n
A date or venue for Joshua v Fury has not been announced. Hearn has previously suggested it could land in November on streaming giant Netflix.<\/p>\n
Joshua attended Fury’s recent comeback fight against Arslanbek Makhmudov and was called out by his British rival immediately after he secured a comfortable decision win. Fury, 37, attempted to goad Joshua into the ring, but he declined.<\/p>\n
Afterwards, Team Fury said they had signed their part of the contract and were waiting on Joshua to do the same.<\/p>\n
“I’m looking forward to competing and picking up where I left off,” Joshua added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Joshua has signed a deal to fight fellow former world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, Eddie Hearn has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-634559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}