By Charles Brun: Tyson Fury says he and Anthony Joshua should put their heavyweight titles in the trash and go ahead and fight. Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) isn’t saying when he’d consider facing Joshua (24-1, 22 KOs), but he believes the fight will happen ‘sooner or later.’
Interestingly, Fury had the chance to toss his WBC title away earlier this year to face Joshua in Saudi Arabia in a fight that Eddie Hearn had set up.
Had Fury tossed his WBC title, it wouldn’t have mattered if the U.S arbitrator had ordered him to give former WBC champ Deontay Wilder a rematch.
Fury could have vacated his WBC belt
Had Fury binned the WBC strap, he would have made $100 million+fighting Joshua on August 14th in Saudi Arabia, and the boxing public would have had the fight that they wanted.
At this point, the fans no longer care whether world titles are on the line for the Joshua vs. Fury fight. They just want to see these two battle it out while they’re still at the top of their games, more or less.
You can argue that Joshua is still in the zenith of his career, but Fury, there’s cause for doubt with him being out of the ring for the last 19 months.
“I’ve never been optimistic about this fight happening, and even when we said it was going to happen in Saudi Arabia and the deal was done, I still wasn’t optimistic about it, and guess what? It never happened,” said Fury to The Overlap on Anthony Joshua.
“I do think sooner, or later it has to happen, even if we have to go AWOL, completely throw all the belts in the bin for whatever reason. I’d do that if it makes sense, but I’m not sure he’d be willing to do that,” said Fury about a fight with Joshua.
It’s too late for Fury to bin his WBC title because he’s already signed to fight Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs) on October 9th, and his career could implode depending on what happens in that fight.
Let’s look at it this way. If Wilder blasts Fury to smithereens on October 9th, Tyson can forget about that huge pot of gold he would have gotten in a Joshua fight.
That hundred million smackers that Fury could have gone fighting Joshua last August will have gone up in smoke. Instead of getting that moolah, Fury would be forced to fight Wilder again in a fourth match, and this time his career would be hanging by a thread.
I hate to say it, but Joshua and Hearn wouldn’t touch Fury with a 100-foot pole if he loses two fights in a row to Deontay. Fury would be useless to Joshua because his career would be finished after a second loss to Deontay.
Heck, Fury should have lost the first fight with Wilder in 2018 after being knocked cold in the 12th round. That was the strange fight in which the referee gave a count to Fury while he was unconscious.
When do you see referees giving counts to unconscious fighters in this era? Some boxing fans believe that Fury was given a long count, which would be sad if true.
In looking at that knockdown replay, it looks strange how the referee went the opposite way of Fury after he was dropped in the 12th by Deontay.