By Charles Brun: Tyson Fury says he will offer Anthony Joshua a December fight if unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk is unavailable to fight him due to injuries.
Fury (32-0-1, 23 KOs) says he believes there is still interest from the boxing world in a fight between him and former unified champion Joshua, even though AJ has now lost three of his last five fights.
For a fight between Fury and Joshua (24-3, 22 KOs) to take place in December, it would require AJ to be assertive and instruct his promoter Eddie Hearn that he wants the fight with ‘The Gypsy King’ next.
Hearn has his own ideas for Joshua’s next fight and says he wants him to face a top 15 contender in December.
In other words, that’s Hearn coded talk that means he’ll comb the bottom of the top 15 to find a hapless contender who can’t hit and has virtually zero chance of beating AJ.
“I still think that even though he has lost 3 of his last 5 fights, I still think people would like to see that fight. So if Oleksandr Usyk doesn’t want the fight for whatever reason, we’ll go and offer the fight to AJ,” Tyson Fury told BT Sport.
The basic problem with Fury fighting Joshua in December is that the fight will probably take many months to make, and there probably won’t be enough time for the fight to happen before the end of the year.
Fury likely wants to be the A-side, which won’t fly with Joshua & Hearn, and that would make negotiations a real mess. It doesn’t matter that Fury has the WBC belt because that title could very well be a trinket.
It comes down to which of the two fighters is more popular in terms of negotiations, and it’s obvious that Joshua is the much bigger name in the sport.
“He’s [Usyk] He openly said he doesn’t want to fight me this year. He wants to fight next year. I can not do anything about it. I would have beaten AJ and Usyk together on the same night,” Fury continued.
“I am going to fight in the next few months in the UK. Usyk is not going to be ready and he doesn’t want to fight whoever is available. They’re all bums anyway,” Fury said of his opposition.
