Turki Alalshikh made it official on X on Wednesday. Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua headlines December 11 at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, streaming live only on Netflix, with Deontay Wilder vs. Jai Opetaia in the co-main slot. His post also listed Da’Mazion Vanhouter vs. Michael Essomba and Martin Bakole vs. Solomon Adebayo, tagged The Ring, and promised more fights to come. Damon Martin pointed out on X that the main card is heavyweights top to bottom. MiddleEasy and talkSPORT both reported the two undercard additions, and talkSPORT’s headline says one of them involves a Dana White prospect. The headline doesn’t say which fighter that is, so I won’t guess.
Why the card is built this way
My read on the matchmaking is simple. Fury and Joshua can sell a stadium by themselves, so everything underneath exists to reinforce one idea: one night, one weight class, the biggest men in the sport. A Netflix viewer who clicks in for the main event gets a co-main that also starts with a famous heavyweight name, and the depth bouts keep the size theme going all the way down. I like it. Themed cards usually fall apart because someone needs a slot filled at the last minute. Alalshikh still has open spots, so check back on that once the full lineup lands.
What the sources tell us about Joshua’s form
The announcement material doesn’t include a single word of tape on either headliner, so I’m working with what’s actually in front of me. The most recent data point on Joshua comes from the Jake Paul coverage. Joshua stopped Paul in Round 6 last December and broke his jaw. The BBC reported that Paul needed two titanium plates and had some teeth removed afterward. Paul, now 12-2, has lost only to Tommy Fury and Joshua, and his next fight against Cedric Doumbe on Dec. 24 is a cruiserweight bout.
View post on X
Here’s what I take from that, and I’m reading between the lines. Six rounds is a long time for a former heavyweight world champion to spend with a man who now competes at cruiserweight. You could call that rust. I’d call it a fighter who didn’t feel any need to rush and picked his moment. The jaw fracture says the power was there when he finally committed. That patience is exactly what you need against a big man you can’t hurry, and Fury is the biggest man Joshua could possibly be facing in Cardiff.
On Fury, the sources give me nothing current. No recent result, no camp news, no weight. The one detail the two men share in this material comes from a Yahoo Sports piece on Francis Ngannou, which notes that Ngannou boxed both of them. It doesn’t give results, so I won’t fill them in for you.
The exchanges I’ll be watching
Since I can’t lean on stats the sources don’t give me, here are the questions I’ll be grading on fight night. First, who owns the distance in Rounds 1 through 3. When two heavyweights both have reach, whoever plants his feet first sets the rhythm for the whole fight. Second, whether the right hand that finished Paul comes out early or gets saved for the second half the way it did last December. Third, the clinch. When either man leans and smothers, the referee’s patience on breaks will shape how many clean exchanges we actually see. I’ve watched enough MMA referees let clinches stall to know that one official’s tolerance can change a fight more than any game plan.
My pick, and it’s a lean built on the only form the sources show me: Joshua, late, after he’s seen enough. I’ll happily revisit that once real camp information comes out.
Wilder vs. Opetaia is the division fight
The co-main is where the next challenger probably comes from, at least in my read. Whoever wins Wilder vs. Opetaia stands one slot below the headliners on a card designed entirely around heavyweights, and that’s an easy sell for the next stadium date. The sources give me the pairing and nothing else, so I’m not going to make up a tale of the tape. Bakole vs. Adebayo and Vanhouter vs. Essomba look like the depth layer, the fights that tell us who gets called up in 2027.
View post on X
The MMA side of a very heavy December
This is where my world crosses over. Ngannou, 40, has stretched his MMA win streak to eight since those boxing nights with Fury and Joshua. Yahoo reports that he still considers himself the lineal UFC heavyweight champion, and he said so plainly in a reply to MMA Fighting: “The undisputed HW belt is somewhere in my closet [in] cameroon.” That landed the same week Ciryl Gane headlines UFC 334 at Madison Square Garden against undefeated Josh Hokit. It’s a lot of heavyweight conversation for one month.
Then comes Dubai. Paul faces Doumbe on Dec. 24 at Coca-Cola Arena, and he told reporters at the Paris press conference, “I’m 100% retiring if I lose to this guy. For sure.” Most Valuable Promotions also added Alistair Overeem’s pro boxing debut against Jimi Manuwa, scheduled for six rounds. Both men are 46, and Manuwa already stopped Chase Sherman in Round 2 of his own debut on August 29.
So the calendar goes Cardiff on Dec. 11, then Dubai 13 days later. The first night decides who runs heavyweight boxing heading into 2027. The second decides whether Paul keeps a career that Joshua nearly ended.
