By Juan Flores: In a series of Tweets on Thursday, heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua turned into a Mr. Hyde type character in trashing Tyson Fury and Joseph Parker on social media. Joshua (20-0, 20 KOs) told Fury to lose some weight in not so kind words. It also seems like it was someone else in charge of Joshua’s Twitter account, because he’s never shown this side to his personality.
Joshua told the 29-year-old Fury to “get fit you fat [expletive] in letting him know that he wants him to lose weight so the two of them can fight each other in 2018.
Here’s what Joshua had to say about the mind-mannered WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker:
“@joeboxerparker Sips tea, continues to read tweets and refreshes email…still no offer.”
Parker, 25, is who Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn is trying to negotiate a fight with for early 2018. However, the 20 percent cut of the revenue that Hearn has offered Parker has been deemed unsuitable by his promoter David Higgins. Joshua, 27, certainly isn’t going to help things by giving Parker grief on Twitter. If Joshua wants to help matters, he should tell Hearn to give Parker a respectable offer, such as 60-40 or 55-45 split of the revenue.
Joshua recently had frowned upon guys like Deontay Wilder and other heavyweights using social media to try and gets against him. Joshua said, “all these guys doing their negotiations over social media, I’m not into that.” Well, it looks like Joshua is now playing the same game as the other heavyweights, but doing it in a more forceful manner. Wilder isn’t quite as direct as Joshua with his comment about Fury on Twitter.
Here’s what Joshua had to say about Deontay Wilder on Twitter:
”A little word on the @BronzeBomber fight. Ready & waiting for the offer 👉🏾”
It seems that Wilder is waiting for the offer from Joshua for the fight, but not it’s being twisted around.
Tyson Fury wasn’t going to take being talked to by Joshua without hitting back at him. This is what Fury had to say to Joshua in response on his Instagram site:
Anthony Joshua, message to you live and direct. I do not care about you! Like I told you before I’ll punch your face in bad boy. Fighting to me is easy and slapping punks like you is even easier. Good to see Eddie has let you of your leash for the day. But he better put you back on before u get bitten.🖕🏻”
It sounds like Joshua got on Fury’s bad side in taking a shot at him about his weight. In fairness to Joshua, he needs Fury to lose the weight quickly so that he can face him in 2018 at some point. It’s no good to Joshua if Fury is still walking around in the 300 pound range in 2018. Joshua needs Fury to be in shape for him to fight him, and more importantly for him to get credit for beating him. It’s not going to work well if Fury marches into the ring with Joshua weighing over 300 lbs. and is too fat to defend himself.