Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua might be headed toward a fight, but an attempt to get Joshua and promoter Eddie Hearn to publicly accept a challenge after Fury\u2019s win over Arslanbek Makhmudov didn\u2019t produce any results.<\/p>\n
The long-awaited, long-overdue, but still commercially massive fight between the two heavyweight stars was teased throughout the Fury vs Makhmudov broadcast on Netflix, but was not made official.<\/p>\n
Turki Alalshikh called promoters Frank Warren and Hearn into the ring after the bout, though Hearn did not join them. Alalshikh then gave the microphone to Fury, pointing over to the ringside Joshua and saying, \u201cHe\u2019s the next.\u201d<\/p>\n
10 years in the making, let\u2019s fucking dance!<\/p>\n
\u2014 Tyson Fury<\/p>\n
\u201cNext, I want to give you the fight you\u2019ve all been waiting for,\u201d Fury said. \u201cI want you, AJ. Anthony Joshua, let\u2019s give the fight fans what they want. The battle of Britain! Here\u2019s my challenge: I challenge you, Anthony Joshua, to fight me, \u2018The Gypsy King,\u2019 next! Do you accept my challenge?\u201d<\/p>\n
Joshua stayed seated and stone-faced. Alalshikh was asked if the fight will happen, and said it\u2019s Joshua\u2019s call.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome on, you big shit-house, are you going to fight or not?\u201d Fury asked Joshua directly, and it may not have gotten the response he and his team hoped, as Joshua stayed calm and collected, then said Fury will have to come to the table later.<\/p>\n
\u201cTyson, you\u2019re a clout-chaser,\u201d Joshua replied, still in his seat. \u201cI\u2019ve never had no problem getting in the ring with you. I\u2019ve punched you up when we were kids, and after watching you tonight, I\u2019ll punch you up again. With all due respect, tonight is your night, and you know I\u2019ll sit across that ring from you in due time.\u201d<\/p>\n
You ain\u2019t gonna tell me what to do. I\u2019ve been chasing you for 10 years.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Anthony Joshua<\/p>\n
Joshua made clear that he was not going to be roped into accepting a challenge without a serious negotiation.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou ain\u2019t gonna tell me what to do. I\u2019ve been chasing you for 10 years. When you\u2019re ready, you come and see me, and tell me your terms and conditions, and I\u2019ll have you in the ring when I\u2019m ready. I\u2019m the boss. You work for me. I\u2019m the landlord. Remember that. You work for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo not run from me this time! 10 years in the making, let\u2019s fucking dance!\u201d Fury added. \u201cYou\u2019re next, tosser, and you\u2019re getting knocked spark out! Believe that!\u201d<\/p>\n
Will Fury vs Joshua happen next?<\/p>\n
This felt like a major attempt to spin a narrative that Fury is ready to make a fight and Joshua isn\u2019t. Many will take it that way, and it\u2019s an easy thing to do, it\u2019s how it seems.<\/p>\n
There was nothing to lose from the Fury side here. Either you rope AJ and Hearn into accepting something, publicly, with the spotlight on them, or you convince people they\u2019re trying to avoid the fight when they don\u2019t immediately accept.<\/p>\n
But Hearn and Joshua are smart businessmen, and they\u2019re not new to this. They also know that whatever people might say before a deal gets done, if the deal gets done, the fight will sell.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is this: Joshua\u2019s fights are worth a lot of money. So are Fury\u2019s. And if a legitimate deal had not already been hammered out \u2014 and it may have been, this could all be theatrics, too \u2014 then there\u2019s no reason to expect Joshua to just announce that he will fight Fury next, without having terms in place and signed off. It would be quite easy, in theory, to challenge Joshua, get him to publicly accept, and have he and Eddie Hearn look bad if they feel like they were then low-balled on the actual offer and reneged on a deal that never really existed in the first place.<\/p>\n
Fury vs Joshua IS the fight to make, everyone involved knows that. It\u2019s the biggest money, it will mean the most to the current careers of Fury and Joshua, who are both past their best days but still hugely marketable stars, especially in the United Kingdom. If it doesn\u2019t happen for whatever reason, both sides will tell their tales of woe. But I expect that it will by the end of this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua might be headed toward a fight, but an attempt to get Joshua and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,11974,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-525995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-commentary-opinion","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}