Tyson Fury called Anthony Joshua’s coach a traitor, and the coach has responded, The Mirror reported Saturday morning.
That’s the headline, and right now it’s also most of the story. The material we have from The Mirror’s report covers only the basic shape: Fury used the word “traitor” and Joshua’s coach answered. It doesn’t include the coach’s name, the context of Fury’s shot, or what the coach actually said. So there are no quotes in this piece. I’m not putting words in anybody’s mouth on a heavyweight feud, which is exactly the kind of thing that gets repeated in every gym in England by lunchtime.
What we do have is the recent record on both men, and it’s plenty to keep a grudge warm.
Joshua’s last fight came last December against Jake Paul, a spectacle a lot of people rolled their eyes at right up until Joshua landed a right hand in Round 6 that broke Paul’s jaw. It was Paul’s second professional loss, it snapped his six-fight winning streak, and it sent him in for multiple surgeries. Paul, now 12-2, has his comeback officially set for Dec. 24 in Dubai under his own MVP banner. The opponent hasn’t been named, though Bloody Elbow reports Darren Till looks like the frontrunner.
Then there’s the Francis Ngannou comparison, the one every Joshua and Fury argument eventually circles back to. Fury got Ngannou first, in Ngannou’s boxing debut, and nearly lost it on the scorecards. Joshua got Ngannou second and knocked him out in Round 2. If you’re in the Joshua camp, that’s your opening statement. If you’re in the Fury camp, you point out who took the fight when the danger was unknown.
The money side tilts toward Joshua too. SportsPro’s list of the 150 most marketable athletes of 2026, published Oct. 28, had Joshua at No. 52 with a score of 59.57, narrowly outside the top 50 and second among combat sports names behind Ilia Topuria at No. 41. Joshua’s brand equity score of 36.55 out of 45 was the highest of any fighter on the list. Fury came in at No. 100 with 52.86, though he did beat Joshua on momentum (25.42 to 21.43). Oleksandr Usyk, for the record, landed at No. 109. Joshua topped the entire list back in 2017, the year he beat Wladimir Klitschko.
My take: calling somebody’s coach a traitor costs Fury nothing, and answering it costs the coach nothing either. A signed contract costs real money, and that’s the only part of this I’d actually care to read about. Until one shows up, this is two camps trading words through the British tabloids while Paul gets ready to fight in Dubai on Christmas Eve.
