Hearn- Working Date For Fury-Joshua December 17th In Wales

It looks as though the possibility of WBC heavyweight champ Tyson Fury fighting his fellow Brit and former two time unified champion Anthony Joshua is growing. And, Joshua’s promoter is going on the record with purse negotiations and even has the tentative date for the proposed bout.

Hearn told IFL TV Wednesday morning in the U.K. that Fury’s Queensberry Promotions has sent him an initial offer for Fury to make his second title defense this year against Joshua. And, Hearn says they are working that with the date of December 17th in Cardiff, Wales,

“In essence, we accepted the 60/40 (percentage of purse split favoring Fury) offer this morning. Lots of conversations to have. I don’t know if this a play to let this break down and then, fight someone ‘well under par’ in November/December and say, ‘I tried to make the AJ fight.’ Or, I don’t know if this is to try to get the Usyk fight agreed for a lot more money?” Hearn told the show.

“We’re going through all those processes. It’s difficult because all the media, everybody are ‘Are you gonna do it?! Are you gonna do it?!’ All I can tell you at the moment is, we accept 60/40.”

Hearn pointed out in the lengthy conversation that George Warren, son of Queensberry’s Frank Warren who co-promotes Fury, has mentioned December 17th would be the date. That’s because Queensberry has reserved the multipurpose 73,000+ seat Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, for that date for Fury to likely fight someone.

And, critically, Principality Stadium, unlike Wembley or others in England, has fully retractable roof that can be closed to deal with the British Wintertime conditions for a boxing match.

As we wrote yesterday, Frank Warren confirmed Monday morning to TalkSport that they were sending an offer to Joshua at Fury’s request. However, as Hearn theorized above, this could all be part of negotiating a couple of different fights for Fury. The biggest and most appealing is to fight the unbeaten, WBA/IBF/WBO champ Oleksandr Usyk for the undisputed title.

Usyk has just beaten Joshua for the second time in less than 12 months and is the most important fight out there for Fury, even though the Joshua bout might be more lucrative. Then, again, the appeal of Fury-Joshua is also lessened ,because with the two losses to the Ukranian and his disastrous TKO loss to American Andy Ruiz in June 2019, Joshua has lost three of his last five fights.

Joshua also behaved oddly after the August Usyk fight, as he fought off tears, stormed out of the ring initially before returning to take the mic and take away from Usyk’s win by rambling on and on to the crowd in Saudi Arabia. So, it may very well be that Fury and Warren see opportunity to beat a damaged Joshua and get paid heftily to do it.

Fury, 32-0-1, just made his second successful title defense back in April in front of a U.K. record 94,000+ fans at Wembley Stadium. That night he dispatched contender Dillian Whyte with a huge uppercut KO in the seventh round.

And, whether he’s going to fight Joshua, get the undisputed bout with Usyk or fight someone else, it looks as though Fury is aiming to be back in the ring against one of them in December.