It’s finally official! Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua have put pen to paper and the two rival British heavyweights who between them hold all the major world heavyweight titles will fight two massive fights. The news was broken by ESPN.com and promoter Eddie Hearn says that an announcement regarding the venue of the fight will hopefully be confirmed “in the next month.” For weeks now, or even longer, we fans have been waiting and waiting for this historic fight – the first-ever heavyweight unification fight between two British heavyweights – to be confirmed. Now the fight, or fights, are done. Over the line, signed, sealed, and delivered.
There has been, and continues to be, much talk that at least one of the two fight will take place in Saudi Arabia, yet as Hearn said nothing is official yet. Hearn is naturally delighted the two big men have put pen to paper.
“The hard part is always getting everybody to put pen to paper but this was a major effort from all parties to get this over the line,” Hearn said moments ago. “You had rival promoters, rival networks and rival fighters. I actually feel we’ve done the hard part. I know how hard we’ve worked these last couple of months and I just feel that this fight is so big it’s not a difficult sell.”
Joshua and Fury will each get 50 percent of the fight purse. This one, though, is bigger than money. Fury, who has for so long proclaimed himself as the greatest fighter ever, needs to win this one to remove any doubt he is the best heavyweight of his generation. Joshua has the lofty task of proving Fury wrong. There is no official word yet on the date of the fight, yet some perhaps optimistic reports suggest the fight could happen in June. That’s not too far away, however, and plenty of people feel the fight will not actually happen until August or September.
Fury, who enjoys playing games, mind games especially, was just days ago telling us all how he was drinking “up to 12 pints a day,” that he had stopped training, that the Joshua fight was basically nowhere near close to being made. Fury was obviously enjoying himself at our expense. The hard training will now begin in earnest and both heavyweights know there can be no corners cut in the gym in the lead-up to this mega-fight.
The biggest fight of the year is now official and there is cause for celebration. But will the biggest fight of the year be the best, most action-packed fight of the year? That’s something else entirely. There is no doubt, though, that many millions of fight fans will pay to see this one. Let’s see how heavy that PPV price-tag will be.