Promoter Eddie Hearn has insisted that the long-awaited showdown between British heavyweight rivals Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua must take place in the United Kingdom under the terms of the deal signed three months ago.
Saudi boxing chief Turki Alalshikh reportedly wants to stage the bout, expected in October or November, at a time that would draw the largest possible global audience.
Should the fight land at Wembley Stadium, however, any plan for a 2:00am (0200 GMT) start would require an exemption to the London venue’s curfew restrictions, fuelling talk that the contest could instead move to New York’s Madison Square Garden.
But Hearn, who promotes Joshua, maintains that his fighter signed up strictly for a UK bout and that the contract would have to be renegotiated before any switch abroad.
“There’s a reason we put contracts together,” Hearn said after Joshua’s second-round stoppage of Kristian Prenga in Jeddah on Saturday kept him on course for the Fury clash, barely 24 hours after Fury had stopped Mariusz Wach in Thailand.
“We insisted that this fight was in the UK. I know that AJ will sometimes want to be a little bit of a peacekeeper, but the reality is he said to me, ‘I want the fight in the UK. This is a British fight’. I can’t agree more,” he added.
Hearn continued: “Turki Alalshikh is our partner and has been an unbelievable supporter of Anthony Joshua…We would have conversations, but the only way the fight doesn’t take place in England is if Anthony Joshua and myself agree to it because we have a legally binding contract that took a long, long time to negotiate. Let’s be honest this is a fight for the British public.”
Joshua, for his part, insisted Wembley was the only venue he had in mind. “When these conversations started, there was no other venue or location that was ever mentioned,” he said. “You fight, come back, fight, and then providing you’re victorious, you’ll be fighting Tyson Fury in the UK, basically Wembley. It’s just got that history when you think of Wembley.”
Source: Vanguard.
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