Tyson Fury has again stated that despite what promoters Eddie Hearn and Bob rum may or may not say, a fight between he and Anthony Joshua is far from close.
Right now, in speaking with IFL TV in a video interview that was uploaded an hour ago, Fury said he is on holiday, is drinking up to 12 pints of lager a day, and is “a man of leisure during lockdown.”
Fury says he has stopped training for the time being (though he does appear to be in shape, his face looking slim in the video) and though he again insisted that he will fight two fights this year –
“I don’t give a F**k who they are against” – Fury said the Joshua fight is a fight that will only be on when he and Joshua are actually in the ring.
“Let’s break it down,” Fury said. “Eddie Hearn is a boxing promoter. So is Bob Arum. It’s their job to sell a fight. Joshua is saying whatever he’s saying, I’m not on social media at the moment at all. So whatever they are saying is very unimportant to me.
Until I’ve got a fight, a date and a hell of a lot of money in my pocket, there is no fight. There’s a lot of things going on that people don’t know about that can scupper a fight like that (clicks his fingers).
So nothing is actually on until you are in the ring. So yeah, we are nowhere near that at the moment. I can’t do nothing, it’s out of my hands. It’s nothing to do with me at all. I’m just a boxer.
There’s a lot of things like I say behind the scenes that can alter a fight. Do I think I’m going to be fighting Anthony Joshua in the next ten minutes? No. Do I think the fight with Joshua will eventually happen? Yes. It has to happen. But do I think it’s imminent? No, I don’t.”
So who are you listening to – Fury, or Hearn, and/or Arum? For weeks now, especially here in the UK, we’ve been told the fight is “just a week or so away from being done.”
While Arum recently said there were “no more issues” to be dealt with, that the fight would, in his opinion, happen. Yet here is Fury, relaxing, drinking (he says, he could be just messing around), and taking a good break from training.
It sure doesn’t look as though the super-fight will take place as soon as May or June, does it? No way. It could be that Fury fights someone else next, on ESPN (he said again to IFL TV today that he will never fight in the UK again) and the Joshua fight gets pushed back to the end of the year; maybe even to next year.
Fans won’t be happy if this proves to be the case (and what if the two rival heavyweight champions do each take an interim fight and one of them loses!?), but Fury is as clear as can be when he says this fight is not at all close.
Not yet. Despite what we’ve been told by certain people.
Fury added how inactivity will not and does not affect him, that he is so good he can get back in and fight pretty much any time he wants to do so.
As fans know, it is now over a year since Fury beat up Deontay Wilder in their rematch, this in February of 2020. Fury did say today that the third fight between he and Wilder is still something that could happen, this despite all that has happened.
“Don’t write Deontay Wilder off, out of the equation, he could be fighting me next, who knows? I could have that trilogy with Wilder yet,” Fury said. “There’s a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes and Wilder might be next, who knows?”
Three times, Fury spoke about things “happening behind the scenes.” Just what is a fight fan to think? And who to trust?