Tyson Fury came out of yet another retirement to cruise past Arslanbek Makhmudov with a near shutout on the scorecards in London on Saturday. He was slick, spry and shifty enough to have Makhmudov stuck in the mud for long stretches of the fight.
It was a much better-looking version of Fury than anticipated, considering the time off. But Makhmudov was levels beneath Oleksandr Usyk, the only man to put blemishes on Fury’s record. After Fury’s win, former champion Deontay Wilder’s entertaining, yet sloppy, decision over Derek Chisora on April 4, and former unified champ Anthony Joshua plotting his return following a car accident in December that killed two of his closest friends, it’s starting to feel like 2018, when all three fighters were in one another’s orbit and the world waited … and waited for them to fight each other.
Fury and Wilder clashed three times in an epic trilogy that set the heavyweight division on fire. However, that’s all we got out of these three fighters in their respective primes. And now, many years later, there is a glimmer of hope that another one of these hypothetical fights will materialize.
The question is which one.
Following his victory against Makhmudov, Fury called on Joshua to finally meet him later this year.
“Next, I want to give [the fans] the fight you’ve all been waiting for. I want you, AJ, Anthony Joshua,” Fury said during his postfight interview, pointing to Joshua sitting ringside. “Let’s give the fight fans what they want. The Battle of Britain. And here’s my challenge: I challenge you Anthony Joshua to fight me, the Gypsy King. Do you accept my challenge?”
Joshua chose to stonewall “The Gypsy King.”
“I’ve sat at this table with him many times,” Joshua said in an interview following the encounter. “In my heart, I’ll fight Tyson Fury tomorrow, especially after watching [this fight]. There’s no problem with me fighting. This is what I do.
“I’m not going to sit here and say, ‘Yeah, I’ll fight him.’ I’m not here to get clout. I’m here to fight. Contracts will be sent over. We’ll go through the nitty gritty and you’ll probably see us in the ring next, more than likely. But I’m not here to start getting in the ring and shouting in someone’s face. If you look at my track record, I’ve never done that. I’m not here for clout.”
Fury and Joshua have negotiated multiple times over the years, getting close in 2021, but a fight has never materialized. Joshua is well-aware of the games that Fury plays and refused to cave in to the former champion’s demands for the sake of entertainment.
“Look, he’s the one that retired,” Joshua said. “I’ve been in the game. I’ve never retired. I’ve been standing strong for the last 13 years. It’s on him, ain’t it? He disappears, comes back, disappears, comes back. I’m standing strong.”
While a fight between the two feels more likely than ever, there’s still a distinct possibility that Joshua moves in another direction with a different heavyweight who he was once rumored to fight: Wilder.
Wilder looked levels below Fury against Chisora a week ago, and his clock is ticking a lot faster than Fury’s. If Joshua is looking at a high-profile tune-up fight, Wilder makes a lot of sense. However, Wilder remains just dangerous enough to heighten the level of intrigue in the long overdue fight.
The reality is that Joshua, 36, holds all the cards here, and both Wilder, 40, and Fury, 37, will have to wait their respective turns in what can now be called the “legacy” tier of the heavyweight division.
The best options for the trio of former world champions are to finally face each other while the rest of the division moves on. It’s unlikely that any of the three will fight young up-and-comers Moses Itauma, Richard Torrez Jr. or Fabio Wardley. All three would love a piece of the division king, Oleksandr Usyk, but the unified champion has been there and done that, defeating Fury and Joshua twice each.
At this point, there’s no reason for these three to fight anyone else but each other. They still are the biggest names in the division and stand to make the most money. This is their best opportunity to win fights, rather than put themselves at risk against younger, powerful but less popular heavyweights. Any mixture of the fights — aside from Fury vs. Wilder — would be massive in the U.K., where Fury and Joshua are from, and could fill up a soccer stadium. All three know this, but rest assured that hubris will come into play and could potentially derail plans … again.