Tyson Fury may well say that he will fight Anthony Joshua for free — but Eddie Hearn believes that is nonsense.
The Matchroom Boxing head honcho is firmly in the camp of the aforementioned AJ ahead of his rematch with Oleksandr Usyk next month in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The pair meet on August 20, with revenge the only thing on Joshua’s mind as he looks to regain the WBA Super, IBF, IBO and WBO heavyweight titles he succumbed to the Ukrainian last September at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.
But Hearn, whose job it is to plan ahead, believes WBC champion Fury’s jibe that he’d do battle with Joshua for free at Wembley Stadium in the capital, believes it’s nothing short of a publicity stunt.
During an interview with the DAZN Boxing Show, Hearn said:
“He’s a genius, Tyson Fury, because no one ever questions what he says.”
It was only recently that Fury, who knocked out Dillian Whyte at the national stadium back in April in a defence of his world title, said that it would take $500million to get him out of retirement.
Fury, both before and after his Whyte win, said he wouldn’t box again and said only half-a-billion dollars would be enough to get him back in the ring, potentially with the other champion in the division Usyk.
“On the one hand, he said you’ve got to pay him $500million to come out of retirement, and in the next sentence, he says he will fight AJ for free on non-PPV.
“It’s absolutely brilliant. The only way Tyson Fury’s going to fight again is for a bucket load of money, and Tyson Fury will go to Timbuktu or Mars for a bucket load of money.”
Fury, despite supposedly being retired from boxing and currently in the middle of a speaking tour around the UK, will be watching on eagle-eyed next month as his two main rivals do battle once more.
The WBC, whose belt Fury is the holder of, has yet to make a decision regarding the future of their title.