Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua will finally come together for their heavyweight showdown in December, but there have been many stumbling blocks along the way.
These two former two-time world heavyweight champions have had careers running almost concurrently for well over a decade. Despite this, they have never before managed to be in the right place at the right time to agree to fight.
After Fury and Joshua were each beaten twice by two-time undisputed ruler Oleksandr Usyk, the path finally opened up, but it has still taken years to get the contract signed.
Both men are in their late thirties and had time out after losing, then rebuilt and got some wins under their belt – Joshua beat Jake Paul and Kristian Prenga, and Fury beat Arslanbek Makmudov and Mariusz Wach.
Speaking to Ariel Helwani, Fury’s manager Spencer Brown outlined some of the issues that made the process so drawn out.
“For everybody involved, it was very, very hard to do. There were four or five different places we were going to, different stadiums, different times of the year. It looked at one stage like we were going to do it in the summer. But we held our nerve.
“Turki Alalshikh held his nerve, so did all the other promoters, Eddie Hearn, Netflix, Frank Warren. Everybody was working in the background to make this fight.”
He then got onto some of the more absurd details.
“There were some silly things that we were arguing over. [The silliest was] who was going first on the poster, because we never chose that. Netflix chose that. We had no input into it. They just put it out one day. That was the silliest thing we were looking at, Does it really matter?”
The fight finally takes place on December 11th at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff. As well as the WBA belt being on the line, there is legacy at stake for both men.
