Anthony Joshua turned down roughly $10 million to let Dana White’s side of the business promote his fight with Tyson Fury, according to a report from Yahoo Sports on Wednesday.
The offer first came to light through Eddie Hearn. Ariel Helwani shared Hearn’s comments on X on Tuesday, and Hearn said TKO put a number in the $10 million range in front of Joshua in exchange for the promotional rights to Fury vs. Joshua. Money alone would have been a story. The conditions made it a better one. Hearn said the deal involved staging the fight in America, and that Joshua had to go to some WWE events as part of it.
Hearn also described how the pitch arrived, and he didn’t make it sound like a handshake at a press conference. “This was someone who came round the back and approached a member of AJ’s team with a very clear written proposal,” he said.
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As for why anyone would pay that kind of money to promote a fight they didn’t build, Hearn had a theory and he wasn’t shy about it. “They need to be there front and center of AJ-Fury in a fight they have nothing to do with,” he said, framing the offer as a Zuffa Boxing play to plant a flag on the biggest heavyweight fight around.
Hearn has been swinging at that operation all week. MMA Fighting reported that he said he doesn’t care if TKO ends up producing Fury vs. Joshua, and that he trashed Zuffa Boxing’s “abysmal” start.
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The fight is still happening
None of this puts the fight in danger. Turki Alalshikh posted Wednesday that Fury vs. Joshua is set for Dec. 11 at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, under The Ring Magazine banner and streaming live only on Netflix. Tickets go on sale Friday, Oct. 9, at 12pm UK time, which is 8am ET for anyone in the States setting an alarm.
So the $10 million was never about whether the fight happens. It was about who gets their logo on it, and which country hosts it.
Joshua, meanwhile, appears to be focused on the actual punching. Argentine broadcaster Gaston Reyno, better known as Tonga, posted video Wednesday of Panamanian great Duran, the man they call Manos de Piedra, showing Joshua body shots. If you’re getting body work tutorials from Duran ahead of a fight with Fury, you’ve probably stopped worrying about wrestling appearances.
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My take: everything we know about this offer comes from Hearn, a rival promoter with every reason to make TKO look desperate, so season accordingly. But the WWE clause is too strange to be something you’d make up for a quote. Joshua had a Welsh stadium date, a Netflix deal and Saudi backing already locked in, and somebody thought a trip across the Atlantic plus a few nights at wrestling shows was worth giving that up. He said no. Friday morning we find out how fast Cardiff sells out.
