Gareth A. Davies believes Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury both need to be built back up before they fight. Both fighters are coming off of losses where they looked flat.
Former WBC heavyweight champion Fury’s loss last Saturday night against unified champion Usyk (23-0, 12 KOs) in Riyadh wasn’t as bad as Joshua’s fifth-round annihilation at the hands of IBF champ Daniel Dubois on September 21st.
Rebuilding Required
Still, Fury appeared lackluster, getting backed up throughout the fight by the smaller Usyk and not putting in the kind of effort required to build the all-British mega-fight against Joshua.
Joshua and Fury need a couple of wins in showcase fights against beatable opposition to look brand new again. Promoter Eddie Hearn can pump Joshua, making him sound like he’s restored to vintage 2013—the same as Frank Warren with Fury. Hearn can make them look like they’re fully restored to factory specifications.
“I don’t think a fight with AJ right now whets the appetite. Something needs to happen in between, and maybe I’ll reverse my view of what I said before. ‘If they both lost, it would be great,'” said Gareth A. Davies to Secondsout, talking about it being a bad time for the Anthony Joshua vs. Tyson Fury mega-fight to happen.
“It needs building now. Joshua was a bit flat and Fury at the moment. I bet Fury would prefer a fight with Usyk right now rather than one against Anthony Joshua. If I was Fury, I would.”
The way Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, is talking, there isn’t going to be any rebuilding being done. He’s in a hurry to put Joshua in with Fury for two fights, and he already said he’s going to talk to Turki Alalashikh about it.
AJ and Fury are both too long in the tooth to be trusted against top contenders. If Hearn and Fury’s promoters were willing to match them against a couple of tomato cans to get them back on the winning track again, it might help, but the public wouldn’t be fooled. They’d know.
