Anthony Joshua has refused to rule out an all British heavyweight fight against Tyson Fury despite his complications in returning to the ring, The Independent reports.
Fury’s last fight, an emphatic victory to snatch Wladimir Klitschko’s heavyweight title, was in November 2015 and he has since been stripped of his licence by the British Boxing Board of Control.
Joshua, who is defending his IBF and WBA titles against Carlos Takam in Cardiff on Saturday, said he would welcome a fight if Fury can get himself into shape.
“If he wants to fight and get his licence at 30 or 40 stone – if he wants to get in the ring and he shows he can move about and control that weight, people will watch him.”
“What was his (Fury’s) fighting weigh – 18 stone? Even if he comes back at 22 stone, (George) Foreman came back bigger when he was in his prime,” added Joshua.
Fury, 29, has previously flirted with the idea of getting into the ring with “bodybuilder” Joshua and said he would remove the “fraud from the division.”
“He is what you call a boxer’s dream,” Fury told BBC 5 live in May. “I’ve never been more confident or serious when I say something, I will play with Joshua like a cat with a ball of wool – hands behind my back, making a right mug of him.”
Whether Fury could get himself into shape to fight remains to be seen, but Joshua feels a return to the ring could be more problematic than he expects.
“If he comes back at that weight and he’s getting into trouble against journeymen, then people won’t be interested. So it’s how he performs at his new weight.”
After igniting the sport with his with over Klitschko, Joshua will not be held to ransom over unreasonable demands for unifying belts according to his promoter, Eddie Hearn.
“We wouldn’t be held to ransom for a belt. (Kubrat Pulev or Takam are fine for his defence of a title after Klitschko, but if it was someone like (Fres) Oquendo, we could say, ‘no-one wants to watch that fight.’”
“The aim is to fight three times next year – ideally in March, April, or summer then December,” added Hearn. “In a perfect world, two of the three fights would be for the additional belts – in any order.”
Source: Punch
