Anthony Joshua and Eddie Hearn have been accused of ‘backing out’ of the Tyson Fury fight by boxing journalist Gareth A Davies. Davies is very sceptical about the deal getting done and believes the fight will be dead in the water by Monday.
Speaking to iFL TV, Davies said: “I’m still sceptical, I think there’s a tiny chink in the door. It’s Friday, I think by Monday it’s probably dead this fight. I think they’re backing out; I really think they’re backing out.”
When pressed as to who he meant, he replied: “Who’s backing out? I think if anyone, knowing boxing and knowing where we stand with the two fighters, I think it’s more likely that Joshua and Eddie are backing out even though we’ve heard from Anthony that he wants the fight and he’s happy to sign but the conditions have got to be right.
“But I think we’ve probably got AJ backing out of this fight because they’re not happy with the terms and they can’t get the terms that they want or it’s an excuse about the commercial value.” The TalkSPORT and Telegraph reporter claimed that AJ is backing out of the fight despite each fighter’s broadcast partner in DAZN and BT Sport being ‘on board’ with doing a shared PPV event – which was widely considered one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the all-British showdown.
“The truth is, do I think it’s likely? No, I don’t think it’s likely and the main reason for that is just the timeframes,” Smith told Boxing Social.
“There’s a lot of things that fall into place to make something like this happen and when you think that December 3 is 9-10 weeks away. For a fight of this size, it’s not the ample time you need; A to promote it and B to get the paperwork done.”
Whether or not the fight will take place is still up in the air although both promotional outfits are understood to be in regular talks and doing everything they can to get the deal done.