By Charles Brun: Eddie Hearn says he’s sent out his first draft of the contract for the Anthony Joshua vs. Tyson Fury mega-fight to Toop Rank promoter Bob Arum and Frank Warren to look over, and he is targeting June for the match to take place.
Hearn states that he hopes to have the contract signed within two weeks, and then they start looking at the location of the fight. The Middle East is still the likely destination for the Joshua – Fury fight.
Both fighters are expected to make £100m [$100 million] for the fight, and we’ll have to see how the sudden wealth that Fury falls into impacts his motivation for the second fight.
The Fury vs. Joshua fight is still on tap to be for the undisputed heavyweight championship. Joshua’s WBO mandatory Oleksandr Usyk is now expected to step aside and face Joe Joyce for the interim WBO heavyweight title.
Hearn, Joshua & Fury want all four titles to be on the line for the first fight in June. The Joshua-Fury fight winner will get a great photo op with all the straps slung over the lucky guy.
Hearn is pretty excited at the thought of Joshua being the one that has all the glittery gold hanging on him if he defeats Fury.
“The first draft of the contract has now gone out to Bob Arum, which is obviously a good thing. The contract reflects the positive nature of the discussions we have had so far around this fight,” said Eddie Hearn to the Daily Mail.
“We now await their comments before we all move on to agreeing on a location. We hope to have something signed within the next two weeks,” said Hearn on the Joshua vs. Fury negotiations.
It’s a big let down that Hearn is planning on taking the fight outside of the UK to a foreign country rather than having it take place in front of their fans. If they were to stage the Joshua vs. Fury fight in the UK right now, it would be without fans, and they would lose out on a lot of money.
One way of getting around this problem would be to wait until the end of 2021 before staging the fight. The boxing world would have to wait a little while, but at least Joshua and Fury’s fans would get a chance to see the match live at Wembley Stadium in London.
Fury might be making a gigantic blunder if he tries the same fight approach against Joshua as he did in his last fight against Deontay Wilder.
In the rematch Fury used his 270+ pound fame to maul the much lighter 231-lb Wilder, and knock him around the ring like a ragdoll. Fury had bulked up for that fight, putting on a lot of size during training camp.
If Fury is going to try and use his size to beat the 245-lb Joshua, he might not enjoy the same kind of success.
The purse split for the first Joshua – Fury clash is 50-50 and 60-40 for the winner going into the second match later this year. You can argue that Joshua is the more popular fighter of the two and deserved a 60-40 split in the first fight.
But if Joshua did insist on that split, probably, Fury would never agree to fight him. That’s pretty much a given.
Yeah, the British boxing fans would be upset if Joshua and Fury never fought, but the rest of the world wouldn’t be too bothered about it.
There are plenty of other heavyweights that would be just as interesting opponents for Joshua as Fury, who mostly a spoiling style of fighter. It’s only recently in Fury’s last to fights against Deontay Wilder and Otto Wallin