Frank Warren joined TalkSPORT on Tuesday evening to discuss the ‘disappointment’ around how fight negotiations between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua have fallen apart.
Warren’s fighter and WBC Heavyweight Champion, Fury, sensationally swiped any offer off the table as Joshua’s team failed to meet a deadline to sign. As far as ‘AJ’ was concerned, the contract would be signed once his legal team had looked over it – something he pointed out was completely standard procedure.
‘The Gypsy King’ was adamant, thought, and despite weeks of positive talks and excitement from fans, he pulled the plug. He then seemed to confirm Mahmoud Charr – WBC’s number 19 ranked heavyweight – as his opponent for the December 3 date.
Providing an update to TalkSPORT on Tuesday 27th September – one day after the deadline – Warren said he hadn’t spoken to his fighter.
“I’ve not even spoken to him today, he’s very, very disappointed, so we’ll see.”
“For me, he’s set a deadline that was ten days after he sent the contract and a few people have said that it doesn’t make sense, but it’s ten days.”
“You get a transfer deadline in football and sometimes there’s a scramble last-minute to get players and get it over the line, that’s what should have been happening. We’ll see where it goes, but at the moment I feel that we are where we are with it.”
Despite leaving the door slightly ajar for talks to continue, it’s hard to see how it returns to the productive discussions we were used to after Fury publicly called Joshua a ‘coward sh*thouse’ and offered the fight elsewhere. The ‘AJ’ camp are yet to comment on the situation and where their fighter goes from here, however that’s expected soon.
Should that be it and the negotiations have come to an unsatisfactory end, fans will be disappointed but not entirely surprised. It speaks volumes about boxing that we can be told everything is agreed between two parties and the fight still ends up on the ‘could have’ pile – most likely followed by both sides blaming the other, and so on and so forth.