The clearest tell came in a small hall in Pattaya. Asked about Anthony Joshua moments after stopping Mariusz Wach in seven rounds, Tyson Fury did not deal in riddles.
“Hopefully the next big fight is signed next week,” Fury told reporters in Thailand on 26 July.
For a fight that has been announced, dismantled and reannounced across five years, that is as concrete a signal as either camp has offered. It came on the same night Joshua climbed off the canvas twice to stop Kristian Prenga in Jeddah, and it landed on top of an agreement Fury’s promoter Frank Warren says the Gypsy King put his name to back in January.
What the paperwork actually says
Both fighters are contracted for a November bout to be broadcast on Netflix, with Warren insisting the deal will hold if the two camps can agree on where it is staged.
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“They’re either going to agree to it or not. If they don’t agree to it then the fight won’t happen,” Warren said.
Joshua’s contract stipulates a UK venue. Wembley was the initial front-runner before a scheduling clash pushed it aside, and Cardiff’s Principality Stadium has been mentioned as a fallback. Saudi backer Turki Alalshikh and Netflix, meanwhile, want the fight moved to Madison Square Garden in New York.
The Hearn ultimatum
That is where Eddie Hearn drew his line last week. Joshua’s promoter warned that any unilateral announcement of a New York date would blow the deal up.
“I promise you, if they announce that fight without an agreement in place to change the venue, there will be no fight,” Hearn said. “We ain’t bluffing.”
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Hearn has also said out loud how isolated Joshua’s camp has become in wanting a home fight: “At the end of August, there will be a press conference. It seems like everybody else has agreed but Anthony Joshua.”
His counter-play, floated in the same interview, is to price the New York move out of reach by demanding a bigger purse for Joshua if the fight is dragged across the Atlantic.
Why previous windows collapsed
Fury and Joshua were closest to fighting in 2020 and again in 2021, when a two-fight agreement was reached before Deontay Wilder invoked a rematch clause and Fury vacated the plan for a third fight with the American. A follow-up push in 2022 died on a deadline row of exactly the kind now playing out in reverse: Fury issued Joshua a contract ultimatum, the date came and went, and the fight was declared dead.
Since then, both men have lost twice to Oleksandr Usyk, Fury has returned from a 16-month retirement, and neither now holds a world title. The bout is no longer about unifying the division. It is about legacy, and about a purse that has been described as £100m per man.
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What happens now
Hearn’s press conference deadline runs out inside two weeks. Warren has said the venue “will be announced in due course” and expects the announcement to arrive before either camp goes back into training camp.
Joshua, for his part, is not talking down the fight. “I am going to rip his heart out,” he said after his Jeddah return.
Fury’s parting shot from Thailand suggested he is done waiting on his old rival: “In Tottenham in front of 70,000 people, he never had the guts to get in the ring and face me. Let’s see if he ever does. I’m not convinced.”
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