Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury have signed to fight each other in a heavyweight mega-fight earmarked for November of this year, but Eddie Hearn said the path to the bout still runs through Joshua’s comeback fight on July 25 in Saudi Arabia.
“Now we have signed to fight Tyson Fury. He has signed to fight Anthony Joshua. The only thing that stands in the way is July 25,” Hearn said, setting up Joshua’s next outing as the key test before the biggest British heavyweight fight in years can move on.
Joshua is scheduled to return in Saudi Arabia against Kristian Prenga, while Fury is expected to take a tune-up contest of his own this summer. Hearn said the two heavyweights may each need that warm-up work before they can be matched later in the year, with the November meeting already agreed in principle.
The commercial logic is straightforward. Joshua and Fury have both been paired with stay-busy fights, and Hearn made clear that if either man comes undone, the headline act disappears with it. “In my opinion if either fighter loses, you cannot do the fight,” he said. “It’s over.”
That is why July 25 now carries more weight than a normal comeback bout. Hearn said he would be “shocked” if Fury was not in Riyadh that night, and even floated the possibility that the former world champion could appear on the same bill for his own warm-up. “We don’t have a problem with that. That’s down to Turki [Alalshikh] to see where he wants to land,” Hearn said.
Joshua and Fury have never come face to face, according to Hearn, who said the pair have “just had 12 good rounds” on paper through the deal that has now been signed. That leaves the July 25 show in Riyadh as the one date that can either steady the route to November or shut it down before the public gets the fight it has been waiting for.
The unanswered question is not whether the megafight exists. It is whether both men will get through the summer unscathed enough to keep it alive, and whether Riyadh becomes the place where the final step toward Joshua-Fury is taken.
