Tyson Fury is more likely to fight Anthony Joshua than secure a rematch with Deontay Wilder before the end of the year, his trainer Ben Davison has claimed.
Fury and Wilder looked set for a rerun of their December classic this spring, only for talks to break down following the Gypsy King’s £80million TV deal with US broadcaster ESPN.
Fury will now face Tom Schwarz in June, with Dominic Breazeale challenging Wilder for the WBC title a month earlier. Joshua, meanwhile, will face Jarrell Miller in New York on June 1.
Talks over an all-British showdown between AJ and Fury have failed in the past. But the Gypsy King’s co-promoter Bob Arum recently claimed a rematch with Wilder is unlikely before 2020. And now Davison believes a fight with Joshua could happen this year.
‘Tyson’s shown that he will always step up to the mark and take the risk. Who else has done that out of those two (Wilder and Joshua)? Nobody,’ he told iFL TV.
‘When you discuss with (Wilder’s team) about coming to us, the conversation goes dead. But hopefully, we can get those fights made.
‘At the end of the day, they were trying to negotiate with Wilder’s team, it didn’t look like we were going to be able to get them on our platform right away so we couldn’t afford to sit still and we had to get something done.
‘I think potentially there could be more of a chance, don’t hold me to it, of Tyson and Joshua at the end of the year.’
Boxing fans’ hopes of seeing the world’s best three heavyweights fight each other may have been dashed for the time being, with Fury, Wilder and Joshua all tied up until the autumn at the earliest.
But Davison admits their decision to face unheralded German Schwarz was made with one eye on the current champions.
‘Listen, those two (Fury and Wilder) could go and fight. They could change their mind, anything could happen. One of them could get beat. You never know,’ he added.
‘A few names got sent across and we had a look. Obviously, we don’t want to make the adjustment of somebody big to somebody small, to have to go back to somebody big.’