With the “retirement” of Tyson Fury (we know the reason for the quotation marks; hardly anyone believes Fury is actually retired), Anthony Joshua needs to get himself another big fight. Eddie Hearn has said numerous times that the only two fights AJ is interested in are one with Fury and one with the Daniel Dubois-Joseph Parker winner.
Well, Fury has gone, maybe for good, but who knows? it seems the Dubois-Parker winner could go into a fight with Oleksandr Usyk in what would be another four-belt heavyweight unification fight.
So, where does this leave Joshua? Speaking with DAZN once again, Hearn said AJ “will fight” and he gave a very loose list of possible names, none of them approaching definite options, more like throw-out possibilities. They are as follows:
Dubois, Parker, Deontay Wilder, Dillian Whyte, Martin Bakole, Zhilei Zhang-Agit Kabayel winner.
Do any of these fights grab you in a certain way? Bakole, we know, confronted Joshua at the recent Ring Magazine awards show, and there has been some talk, at least a little, of these two having a ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ type showdown in Africa. Bakole – who will likely first fight Efe Ajagba in an IBF eliminator, we are still waiting for official confirmation on that fight – has said plenty of times that he will KO Joshua, and quickly. Is this fight too dangerous for AJ at this point in his career?
A rematch with Whyte is always there, and though Whyte looked nothing short of shocking last time out when he struggled to an out-of-shape win over Ebenezer Tetteh, this one would still sell at least reasonably well.
The winner of Zhang and Kabayel may well be looking at a title shot, but maybe money would talk, and Joshua could fight the winner of the February 22 fight, the way he could possibly fight the winner of Dubois and Parker, which will also take place next month, on that massive card in Riyadh.
And then there’s Wilder. The latest we hear is that Wilder, badly in need of a win, will indeed fight Curtis Harper in April. After that—and this is assuming Wilder does get the win over Harper, for if he doesn’t,, he surely will have nowhere to go but into retirement—maybe the fight that should have happened back in 2018 could finally happen: Wilder vs. Joshua, here in 2025.
Would this fight still sell? Yes. Would it be explosive? Most likely, for a short while, at least.
We may have lost out on a Joshua-Fury fight, but we could still get Joshua-Wilder. It’s a fight that is way past its sell-by date, but those fans who are still hungry to see this battle of past their best punchers would still buy it.
