Anthony Joshua may delay his attempt to avenge his loss to IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois by facing Tyson Fury in the first half of 2025.
Promoter Eddie Hearn says he doesn’t want to make the rematch for AJ against Dubois right now because there’s the possibility that Fury could defeat unified champion Oleksandr Usyk in their rematch on December 21st.
Hearn says that if Fury wins that fight, he wouldn’t want Joshua already signed up for a rematch with Dubois when he could take on Tyson in May “for the biggest fight in boxing.”
The 36-year-old Fury is the underdog against Usyk, and unless he can find the Fountain of Youth and drink heavily from the youth-restoring waters, he’s likely to be blown out by the talent in their rematch. Fury needs his youth to be restored to his 2015 form, for when he picked up his best career win, he beat Wladimir Klitschko.
The last two fights for Gyspy King have shown that he’s aged poorly, and he’s not capable of winning the second fight against Usyk or beating any of the killers in the top five. Even novice Francis Ngannou flat-out beat Fury but was given an old-fashioned controversial 10-round split loss last year on October 28th in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The way Fury performed against Usyk earlier this year on May 18th, he won’t last long in their rematch.
Fury will likely be destroyed by Usyk on December 21st, making a fight between him and Joshua a joke for May 2025, when Hearn is chomping at the bit to make the money-grab match.
“AJ wants revenge, but the only issue is timing. For the rematch to happen in February, training camp will have to start in a couple of weeks,” said Eddie Hearn to BBC Sport about why Anthony Joshua won’t be taking the rematch with Daniel Dubois.
“There are always niggles, and he had a few, so physically, it’s just a case of whether AJ is ready to do that. It would be frustrating if we made the Dubois rematch and Fury won [the Usyk rematch]. Then we’re sitting there going, ‘Hang on a minute, we’re fighting Dubois, but we could have fought Fury in May for the biggest fight in boxing.’”
The underlying message is that Hearn doesn’t have confidence that Joshua can win the rematch against Dubois. So, he’d rather match AJ against Fury to grab the loot instead of putting him back in with the shark Dubois and watching him get torn apart again.
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