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Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua Reportedly Exchange Potential Fight Contracts
February 26, 2021
World heavyweight boxing champions Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua have reportedly taken a significant step toward booking one of the biggest heavyweight boxing fights in years.
According to boxing journalist Dan Rafael, Fury and Joshua have exchanged contracts for a potential fight, meaning they have agreed to terms. Those terms have been put into a contract and will now be reviewed by lawyers to negotiate and finalize the language.
If the fight does happen, it will pit the top two heavyweight fighters in the world against each other, as Fury and Joshua own a combined career record of 54-1-1.
Fury has been open about his desire to fight Joshua. This week, Fury said he plans to fight twice in 2021 and hopes one of them is against Joshua.
Per ESPN's Brett Okamoto, Fury added the following regarding a bout with Joshua:
"They've had a full year to try and make this fight happen. Since the last [Deontay] Wilder fight, even before the Wilder fight, they were talking about a fight potentially between me and Joshua. They've had a full year to make something happen, and it hasn't happened as of yet. It is what it is. We're no further forward today than we were a year ago.
"The way [COVID-19] is at the moment, I don't think [negotiations] got much to do with the fighters. It's to do with the venue, date, place, site fees. It's to do with everything but the fight itself."
The 32-year-old Fury is the reigning WBC and The Ring heavyweight champion. He owns a career record of 30-0-1 and is coming off of a convincing victory over Wilder.
Fury and Wilder fought to a draw in 2018, but Fury dominated Wilder to the tune of a seventh-round technical knockout when they met again in 2020. A third fight between them was supposed to happen, but the time ran out on Wilder's rematch clause before an agreement was made.
The 31-year-old Joshua fought much more recently than Fury, beating Kubrat Pulev by ninth-round knockout in December.
Joshua shockingly lost via seventh-round TKO to Andy Ruiz in June 2019, giving him the first blemish of his career, but he bounced back to beat Ruiz by unanimous decision in December 2019.
He currently owns a 24-1 record and is the holder of the WBA (Super), IBF, WBO and IBO heavyweight titles.
Fury vs. Joshua would result in one true heavyweight champion being crowned, plus it would likely do huge business on pay-per-view.
In addition to being a big deal in the United Kingdom since both Fury and Joshua are British, fight fans all over the world would tune in, as they have been clamoring for the fight for years.