Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua is still on. Punch Newspapers reported Sunday that an injury to Fury won’t derail the fight, which keeps the British heavyweight showdown pointed at its Dec. 11 date. The report doesn’t spell out what the injury is, how Fury picked it up or whether it has changed his training. Until his team says more, those details are unconfirmed.
The scare lands in the middle of an unusually loud buildup, and most of the noise has come from the promoters. MMA Fighting’s Morning Report laid out the latest round between Eddie Hearn and Dana White. Hearn insists White has no involvement in the main event. White counters that he’s helping promote and produce the Dec. 11 show. Either way, White will be on site, because he announced last week that his Zuffa Boxing cruiserweight champion, Jai Opetaia, is moving up to heavyweight to face former heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder on the card.
Fury isn’t thrilled with that booking. Bloody Elbow reported that he called Wilder’s spot on his undercard “a dying shame.” Wilder, who turned 41 last month according to Bloody Elbow, has been working closely with White. White was the first guest on Wilder’s new podcast, Heavyweight Truth, and that episode went viral for reasons that had nothing to do with boxing.
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The White and Hearn feud also picked up a side plot over the weekend. Misfits Boxing co-president Mams Taylor wrote on social media that his company had sent both men an offer, after a rumor circulated that it was worth $10 million for them to box each other. White told All Out Fighting he’d never received it, and he didn’t hold back about his rival. “Eddie Hearn’s a bum,” White said, before suggesting a private alternative: “If Eddie Hearn wants to fight, he can pick the gym here in London.”
For a sense of what Joshua can draw, his 2024 fight with Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium pulled more than 98,000 fans, per Bloody Elbow. Pairing him with Fury is the fight British boxing fans have been asking about for years, so an injury headline about a month out was always going to cause some panic.
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My quick take is to relax a little, but only a little. “Won’t derail” is a reassuring phrase, and it also tells you nothing about how many hard sparring rounds Fury loses or what he can’t drill for the next few weeks. A heavyweight who comes in short on rounds usually shows it around the middle of the fight, when the jab slows and the clinches get longer. Until Fury’s team says what the injury actually is, I’m treating it as a question about his conditioning on fight night. The fight itself looks safe. The Dec. 11 date stands for now, and the next real sign will be whether Fury’s camp describes the injury or keeps quiet.
