Heavyweight Zhilei Zhang declined to make a pick between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury should the two British fighters decide to slug it out later this year.
Fury announced his retirement from the sport on Monday despite rumors suggesting that he could lock horns with fellow former unified heavyweight champion Joshua in the coming months.
With Fury’s announcement set to put an end to a possible fight with Joshua, Zhang believes the move could be a strategy to market the fight.
“Who knows? He’s the only one who knows what’s going on. I mean, he could be asking for more money for the AJ fight with this excuse, and he could also be getting tired of boxing. He just wanna get it over,” said Zhang during an interview with Fight Hub TV.
A fight between Fury and Joshua has been on the cards for a very long time, but the showdown has failed to materialize mostly due to promotional tussles. The momentum of the fight was resurrected recently when both fighters lost to Daniel Dubois and Oleksandr Usyk.
While Joshua suffered a brutal fifth-round KO defeat to Dubois last September, Fury lost again to Usyk in their rematch in December. Zhang said the fight could’ve lived up to its billing if it had happened earlier.
“I just wish that this fight would’ve happened when they were both in their primes and it’s a shame that it didn’t happen back then.
“Now you can see they’re both either on their way out or they’re both on the decline, and people are talking about it and it seems like this fight will happen.
“I don’t know who’s gonna win or lose, but it’s a shame it didn’t happen within this time frame.”
Bernard Neequaye is a sports journalist with a specialty in boxing coverage. He wrote a boxing column titled “From The Ringside” in his native Ghana for years. He can be reached on X (formerly Twitter) at @BernardNeequaye, LinkedIn at Bernard Neequaye and through email at [email protected].
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