Hearn says Joshua vs. Fury possible for spring 2019

By Boxing News - 12/19/2017 - Comments

Image: Hearn says Joshua vs. Fury possible for spring 2019

By Scott Gilfoid: British promoter Eddie Hearn says he’d like to have heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (20-0, 20 KOs) face Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) at the end of 2018 in an ideal world, but a fight in spring of 2019 is quite possible.

Hearn has an ambitious schedule in his mind for 2018 in wanting to match Joshua against WBO champion Joseph Parker in the first quarter of the year followed by a fight against WBC champion Deontay Wilder after that. The third fight that Hearn is hoping to make for Joshua next year is Tyson Fury. However, it’s going to be tough to make the Fury fight, as well as Wilder fight due to the negotiation process.

Wilder and Fury will likely want a 50-50 deal with Joshua, and that’s not going to work well for Hearn, who wants Joshua to get the bigger slice of the revenue for his fights.

“I think there’s a chance for it for the end of the year,” said Hearn to ESPN.com. ”In an ideal world, AJ would fight three times against Parker, Wilder and Fury. That’s a dream land scene but we must fight two of those so if Fury has to wait, then it will be spring 2019 and Anthony is fine with that,” said Hearn.

Hearn would be better off letting the Joshua-Fury fight marinate by waiting until Fury has had at least 1 year of tune-up fights under his belt before he looks to make the Joshua vs. Fury fight. Hearn is in too much of a hurry to make that fight for some reason. You can read that as Hearn wanting to catch Fury while he’s still ring rusty and not fully ramped up or you could see it as greed. If Hearn wants the quick money from a Joshua vs. Fury fight, then he’ll go for the fight and not let the 6’9” former unified champion get enough tune-ups under his belt to come fully back.

The best thing that Hearn can do is wait until Fury comes back and takes some scalps from guys like Tony Bellew and a few other heavyweights before he pushes for a fight between him and Joshua. Fury has been out of the ring for 2 years since his fight with Wladimir Klitschko in 2015. Fury needs to come back slowly if he’s going to be successful with his comeback. Obviously, that’s not Hearn’s look out. His only concern is for his fighter Joshua; to make sure he wins and gets a good payday. That’s why it’s in Fury’s best interest to tell Hearn to wait until he’s fully ready to make the Joshua fight in 2019 or 2020.

Personally, I think Fury should wait until 2020 before fighting Joshua. By waiting that long, Fury will be at his level best. If he’s not quite what he once was, he’ll know it by that point, and he’ll have worked out a strategy to deal with what’s lost from his game.