Tyson Fury fears he will NEVER fight Anthony Joshua “because I cannot get him in the ring for any amount of money.”
The heavyweight battle of Britain everyone wants to see is stuck in the pending tray – and the Gypsy King claims Oleksandr Usyk spurned a megafight at Wembley in April to take on another Brit, Daniel Dubois, for less than half the payday.
Fury, who turns 35 on Saturday, bares his soul in a nine-part Netflix documentary, At Home With The Furys, which is released next week. Caught in the twilight zone between his 33-0-1 record and retirement, it is sometimes a tough watch as he slips into bouts of depression with two major omissions on his fight record.
Former WBA, IBF and WBO champion Joshua’s scheduled return to the ring, against Dillian Whyte next Saturday, was called off at the weekend after the ‘Body Snatcher’ failed a drugs test. In the meantime, Fury has signed to meet former UFC champion Francis Ngannou – under Queensberry Rules – on October 28 in Saudi Arabia, with ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson in the Cameroonian’s corner.
The prospect of a Joshua-Fury showdown looks further away than ever. But speaking to promote his Netflix docu-series, the WBC champion insisted: “Here’s the thing about Anthony Joshua : I cannot get him in the ring for any amount of money. I’ve offered him world title shots and extremely large amounts of money, but he ain’t going to make the fight. (Joshua agreed in principle to a 60-40 split for a bout in December last year but talks broke down).
“Me and my team, my lawyers, have come to the conclusion and accepted the fact that AJ won’t fight me for any money or any titles. I saw footage of him recently training by punching a mattress – I’m not sure if it was taken off TikTok or one of his social media accounts, but I’ve not idea what was going on there.
“Usyk was supposed to be fighting me at Wembley last April, but that never happened. There was talk of me making all sorts of demands but there was nothing to back it up. The only conditions on my part were that there would be no rematch and he’d get 30 per cent – which he agreed to, only to try and worm his way out of it.
“Now he’s fighting Daniel Dubois in a three-title unification fight for a purse of $8 million, which makes no sense because 30 per cent of the purse for fighting me would have been worth around £13 million to him, so he’s passing up more than twice as much money. As for the cheap talk of Tyson Fury avoiding Usyk, I would smash him to smithereens.
“I don’t rate him at all, I’ll go through him like a hot knife through a block of cheese – not a problem. But he can’t expect to make around £6m to fight Dubois and then make £13m to step in the ring with me. Not happening.” -Mirror