Frank Warren admits to discuss fight Tyson Fury against Anthony Joshua nothing more, but that doesn't mean the promoter isn't interested in doing business with the former two-time world heavyweight champion.
Over the past few weeks, Warren's Queensberry Promotions and Eddie Hearn's Matchroom Boxing have been trying to secure a contract for a heavyweight bout between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. At first, the negotiations were promising, but eventually stalled, and both sides moved in different directions.
"This fight is off the table," Warren said in an interview with IFL TV's Umar Ahmed. “Now AJ will need to get the status of a mandatory challenger for this. If he receives this status, he will receive 20 percent of the total fee, while he could receive 40 percent.
That being said, both camps will have to continue negotiations on the next steps, including rumors that Fury could potentially meet Derek Chisora, who is operated by Joshua's 258 MGT, and Chisora ​​and Joshua are under contract with Matchroom Boxing.
Many view this fight as extremely uninteresting: Fury scored two convincing victories over the veteran Chisora, including a stoppage in November 2014. The main goal of the fight is to keep Fury (32-0-1, 23 KOs) relatively active, whose title defense is scheduled for December in the UK.
“The thing is that Tyson has only had one fight a year (since 2020)," Warren said. “We're just trying to keep it from rusting. We expected that in December there would be a fight with Oleksandr Usyk, but Usyk refused. Now it looks like we can look forward to February. Tyson wants to fight one more time before that. He wanted to fight in December, and we decided to give him a duel."
The next steps for Joshua (24-3, 22 KOs) remain unclear at this point, except that Matchroom hopes to bring the 2012 Olympic gold medalist and former two-time world champion back into the ring before the end of the year. Joshua suffered a second loss in a row to Usyk, and the last was a strange split decision in favor of the Ukrainian southpaw, who clearly deserved to win.
Joshua is likely to get a big name for the warm-up bout, but he won't have a straight shot at any of the heavyweight titles. Fury, after his third victory over Chisora, will be waiting to fight Usyk or someone else who appears in the current WBC series to determine his next mandatory challenger. Usyk also has mandatory contenders for all the championship belts he owns.
Matchroom is co-promoting IBF mandatory challenger Filip Hrgovic (15-0, 12 KOs) who is not likely to risk his place in the lineup against a fighter like Joshua.
Warren is promoting two other mandatory contenders and is confident that either of them will be happy to fight Joshua next time or at any time while waiting in line for the division's top prize. Interim WBO title holder Joe Joyce (15-0, 14 KOs) scored a convincing eleventh round stoppage victory over former WBO belt holder Joseph Parker in his last fight. WBA regular title holder Daniel Dubois (18-1, 17 KOs) is still looking for an opponent to defend his title on November 26.
"If Joshua wants to fight, there are two great fights with Joe Joyce or Daniel DuBois," Warren said. “Both hold very important positions in their sanctioning organizations. They are both mandatory contenders. One of them is the interim champion, Joe Joyce. Daniel is a regular WBA champion. We have options if he wants to discuss something."
