As Tyson Fury demands that all contract negotiations with Anthony Joshua be taken off the table following positive talks for a fight, Eddie Hearn’s prediction at the beginning of it all has been revisited.
Now that Tyson Fury has seemingly confirmed that he will fight Mahmoud Charr on December 3 – although nothing official has been released – it looks like he has halted any hope that fans may see him in the ring with ‘AJ’.
It was hard to argue that talks were positive. The financial split, often a big sticking point in making fights, was agreed quickly. The date was secured and the venue booked. The WBC had said that their belt could be contested in a voluntary defence. Although the broadcaster situation seemed tangled, fans were assured that all companies involved were willing to talk to attempt to reach an agreement.
All of that was swiped from the table by ‘The Gypsy King’ yesterday. He had given Joshua a deadline to sign, and that deadline was missed. As far as he’s concerned, the fight’s off.
Despite being a key part of the negotiations, Eddie Hearn was sceptical from the start. In a TalkSPORT interview broadcast on September 5, Joshua’s promoter said this:
“For me, and the cynic in me of boxing, this smells of:
‘Oh we couldn’t agree the AJ deal so I’m fighting this bloke you’ve never heard of instead, but no one else was available. I tried to make the AJ fight et cetera et cetera.’”
“Fury’s outstanding at getting the public to believe absolute nonsense. It worries me actually what people do believe. If you look at the timeline over the last three or four weeks, it’s unbelievably bizarre, yet people still just take it with a pinch of salt … Oh he’s retired, okay. Oh, he wants half a billion. Oh, he wants to fight Chisora. I mean, two days ago he was calling out Manuel [Mahmoud] Charr.”
Although we will never know truly what went on behind the scenes, if talks have indeed broken down then this may be something Joshua’s camp will point to as the reason.