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Anthony Joshua Slams Tyson Fury: 'The World Now Sees You for the Fraud You Are'
May 19, 2021
Anthony Joshua labeled Tyson Fury a "fraud" Wednesday as their proposed fight scheduled for August appears to be falling apart:
Earlier this week, an arbitrator ruled Monday that Fury was required to fight Deontay Wilder for a third time in the ring by Sept. 15. The decision came one day after Fury announced the fight with Joshua was set for Aug. 14 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Eddie Hearn, Joshua's promoter, acknowledged they "have to have a Plan B in place if Team Fury don't get their act together" and brought up mandatory WBO challenger Oleksandr Usyk as an option.
The WBO on Wednesday posted a letter to Hearn to say Joshua's representatives have 48 hours to iron things out with Fury before a fight with Usyk will be ordered.
Wilder could potentially agree to step aside, which would allow the heavyweight encounter between Fury and Joshua to go ahead. However, Fury claimed Wilder asked for $20 million in order to do so.
That was after Top Rank CEO Bob Arum said there wouldn't be any payment issued to Wilder for the purposes of waiving the arbitrator's ruling.
"We're not paying Wilder to step aside," Arum said to ESPN's Mark Kriegel. "It's better to get rid of him and go about our business. We can make the Fury-Joshua fight for November or December."
Joshua's frustration is understandable.
According to Kriegel, he and Fury were slated to receive around $75 million apiece for their marquee clash in Saudi Arabia. His haul from beating Andy Ruiz in December 2019 was around $60 million.
But it's unclear how culpable Fury is for the current mess. In retrospect, perhaps he and his camp should've waited for a resolution to mediation with Wilder before finalizing a different fight. But they wouldn't have continued on with the process if they thought they couldn't get a ruling in their favor.
Publicly venting his anger toward Fury is probably a futile effort for Joshua—apart from increasing the bad blood between the two—because the outcome seems to be out of his hands.