Hearn thinks Joshua vs. Fury is possible for November

By Boxing News - 05/04/2016 - Comments

hearn736By Scott Gilfoid: Despite the out of shape IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) saying he’ll absolutely be retiring after his rematch with Wladimir Klitschko on July 9, he’s expected to continue his career and face IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua in November or in 2017, according to Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport.

Hearn spoke with Fury’s trainer Peter Fury and he was given assurances that Fury will be taking the fight with Joshua. This leads you to question why Fury has been flapping his gums so furiously about him not liking boxing anymore and wanting to retire from the sport. Is Fury just doing this to drive up interest in his July 9 rematch against Klitschko, or is he doing this to take the pressure off from himself to make it seem to the boxing public that he’s lost interest in boxing?

If Fury gets whipped by Klitschko, as many people are now expecting, Fury has a ready-made excuse he can pull out of his back pocket by saying that he wasn’t mentally into the game any longer and was just taking the fight for the payday. It’s a pretty clever trick to escape the criticism that Fury will be receiving if/when he gets whipped and destroyed by Wladimir on July 9.

“Tyson Fury has belts so he’s definitely a target because Anthony Joshua wants to unify the heavyweight division,” Hearn told Sky Sports. “It’s also a fight we think is quite straightforward for us. One hundred percent our target is Fury. I’ve already spoken to Peter Fury last week. He runs the shop for Tyson and makes all the decisions. He’s told me: ‘100 percent we want that fight.’ We’ve even talked about the deal and the structure of the deal already, so we’ve just got to keep winning. If it’s not November then 100 percent next spring or summer.”

I think I would have to go with what Peter Fury is saying about Tyson Fury taking the fight with Joshua. I mean, how can Fury turn down a payday of more than $10 million against Joshua. That’s just too much money for Fury to walk away from. I think he’ll gladly take the fight with Joshua, and probably lose badly, especially if he balloons up in weight after his next fight against Klitschko. If Fury isn’t going to take the sport seriously by staying in some semblance of shape in between fights, then he’s going to get slaughtered in the ring by anyone remotely good.

Turning training camps into fat farms, where Fury has to carve off 60 pounds of the fat before he can even begin the boxing portion of the training camp is just useless. Heck, by the time Fury takes off all that weight, the training camp will be down to one or two weeks. What kind of boxing training can Fury get in that short of a time? I seriously have doubts that Fury will be able to take all that weight off in just two months. That’s too much fat to burn off in that short of a time frame. It took Fury five months of hard eating to pile on all the fat.

You’re not going to take off all that belly fat in just two months without a calorie restriction diet. When you start restricting your calories, the first thing that goes is muscle weight. Fury has noodle arms and a scrawny, bird-like chest. He can’t afford to lose any muscle at all and have a chance to beat the 40-year-old Klitschko in the rematch.

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I want to know is whether Hearn and Joshua will be still chomping at the bit to fight Fury if Wladimir massacres him on July 9 at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK. Will Hearn and Joshua still be tripping over themselves to sign the well-beaten Fury to a big stadium fight in the UK, or will they recognize that it would be a bad idea to try and sell a fight against Fury with him coming off a knockout defeat against Klitschko? I hate to say it but I think Joshua and Hearn will be more than happy to get a fight against Fury no matter what the circumstances.

I think Fury coming off 100 straight loses, and Joshua and Hearn would happily sign a fight against him. I mean, we are talking about a fighter in Joshua who is fighting guys like Dominic Breazeale, a fighter who was clearly beaten in his last fight by journeyman Fred Kassi.