Ricky Hatton believes Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua will fight happen at some stage – but believes the struggles to make it so have become ’embarrassing.’
‘The Hitman’ is a British boxing legend, and has stayed well involved in the sport past retirement.
He was recently asked by Gambling Zone about the biggest fight possible on these shores – Fury versus Joshua.
“We’ve been wondering if this fight is going to happen for the last five or six years; there’s been a lot of talk and not much else. I think it will happen. I think it needs to happen.
It’s getting to the stage where all the noise around it, it’s getting a bit embarrassing.
Fury, the current WBC Champion, has now offered Joshua a shot at his belt twice – once last year and then again very recently.
The talks last year looked promising for a while before they crumbled in a sea of public deadlines and rushed signatures.
This time around, it didn’t even get that far, with ‘AJ’s team opting to stick to a more realistic plan of fighting once in August and then going into a close-to-signed bout with Deontay Wilder in December.
Hatton – unlike many fans – is keen not to lay blame at either side.
I’m not pointing the finger at Tyson or AJ, nor do I think why it hasn’t happened is down to Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn – nobody knows what the negotiations are like and who is in the right or who is in the wrong.
We don’t know what the route of the problem is. It could be a number of things: the purse, the TV, location, we don’t know.”
Having said that, he’s certain that it’s not good for the sport in this country if the two top heavyweights continuously talk with no action to follow.
“A fight such as this, of this magnitude and size, would be the biggest fight in British boxing history and it’s not happening for some reason.
I think for British boxing it’s a little bit embarrassing. For the future of the sport, the big names need to start fighting each other … If the fight doesn’t happen, it can’t be good for boxing, certainly not in this country.”
There’s the potential for Joshua to now be called as a mandatory challenger for Fury’s belt, although it’s believed that he’ll still bypass this to stick to his two-fight plan.