Anthony Joshua may delay his bid 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 a chance Fury could defeat unified champion Oleksandr Usyk in their rematch on December 21st.
Hearn says that if Fury wins that fight, he doesn’t want Joshua to have already signed up for a rematch with Dubois when he could take on Tyson in May “for the biggest fight in boxing.”
Fury, 36, is the underdog against Usyk, and unless he can find the Fountain of Youth and drinking much of the restorative waters of youth, he is likely to be overwhelmed by talent in his revenge. Fury needs his youth to be restored to his 2015 form, because when he took his best career victory, he beat Wladimir Klitschko.
The last two fights for Gyspy King have shown that he has aged badly, and he is not able to win the second fight against Usyk or beat any of the killers in the first five. Even the novice Francis Ngannou fought the Fury, but he was handed a controversial former 10-round loss last year on October 28 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The way Fury did against Usyk earlier this year on May 18, he won’t last long in his rematch.
Fury will probably be destroyed by Usyk on December 21, making the fight between him and Joshua a joke for May 2025, when Hearn will bite the bullet to make the take out money match.
“AJ wants revenge, but the only problem is the timing. Because the rematch will happen in February, the training camp will have to start in a couple of weeks,” said Eddie Hearn to BBC Sport about why Anthony Joshua will not take the rematch with Daniel Dubois.
“There are always niggles, and he’s had a few, so physically, it’s just a case of whether AJ is ready to do this. It would be frustrating if we did the Dubois rematch and Fury won (the Usyk rematch). So we are sat down to say, “Wait a minute, we’re fighting Dubois, but we could fight Fury in May for the biggest fight in boxing.”
The underlying message is that Hearn has no confidence that Joshua can win the rematch against Dubois. So he’d rather pit AJ against Fury to grab the spoils than put him back with the Dubois shark and watch him get ripped again.
