The potential Anthony Joshua vs. Tyson Fury super-fight might be much further away than you think.
The pair of undefeated heavyweights seemed to be on a collision course for one another, with a set of unification bouts up next for 'AJ' and a couple of tune-up fights on the table for Fury.
Presuming both remain unbeaten towards the end of 2018, it would make complete sense for a showdown with all belts on the line, as well as bragging rights as the baddest man on the planet.
But it's by no means a certainty that the two greatest heavyweights to emerge from Britain in years will battle it out as Joshua's promoter Eddie Hearn has revealed the two reasons why the fight might never come to fruition.
"Anthony needs to be in relevant fights against the likes of Joseph Parker and Deontay Wilder and potentially Tyson Fury at the back end of next year," Hearn told
ESPN. "We're not looking for Anthony to have easy fights.
"He will have to be in some epic fights. There are only two reasons it doesn't happen. The first is that Tyson Fury has lost all sense of reality for a deal for that fight with 'AJ'. He wants a lot more than a 50-50 split, which is a joke.
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"Second reason is that he can't get himself into a physical condition which is good enough to fight 'AJ'."
Last week, Fury took a huge step forward on his comeback trail as he saw his
UK Anti-Doping ban backdated and he will have his
current licence suspension reviewed by the British Boxing Board of Control next month.
He's already
lost half the weight he wants to shed before returning to the ring after his two-year absence but, despite the fact that we've not seen the controversial heavyweight in action since 2015, Fury maintains that he would be the A-side of a clash with Joshua.
"I've talked to Tyson Fury numerous times about it and I don't know if he was having a laugh when he was saying it's a 50-50 split or not, but we're not in a position to talk about that fight anyway for a while," Hearn added.
"Tyson needs one or two fights before he can fight 'AJ', he needs to get himself properly fit first and he knows that because I've read about him saying that.
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"I saw him saying that joking aside he wasn't really doing anything serious [in training] and had a long way to go. He can't really run properly at the moment because he's so heavy so is doing other things.
"It's one thing doing 40 minutes on the cross trainer -- I can do that -- but it's another doing a proper camp, that's when we will find out if he can hold up. He went over on his ankle in one camp [in June 2016, causing rematch with Wladimir Klitschko to be scrapped] and stopped boxing.
"I think there's a chance for it for the end of the year. In an ideal world, AJ would fight three times against Parker, Wilder and Fury. That's a dream land scene but we must fight two of those so if Fury has to wait, then it will be spring 2019 and Anthony is fine with that."
