Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury will face off in London on Wednesday after Fury enrolled in drug testing, resolving a bitter row that had threatened to derail their heavyweight showdown.
Joshua and Fury are due to meet the media for the first time since their fight was announced last week. The bout is set for Cardiff on December 11, but a dispute between Joshua's promoter Eddie Hearn and UFC boss Dana White had plunged it into doubt.
Promoter dispute
White, who also runs Zuffa Boxing, was officially named as a promoter alongside The Ring, which is owned by Saudi Arabian powerbroker Turki Alalshikh. On Saturday, Fury claimed on his YouTube channel that Hearn and Joshua were trying to pull out, putting the chances of the fight going ahead at one per cent.
He said: “If you’ve got a guy that wants to fight, and you’ve got a guy that doesn’t want to fight, then how are you going to make that fight happen?” Speaking to Sky Sports after Johnny Fisher’s victory at the Copper Box on Saturday, White refused to back down. “I’m involved in the fight,” he said.
“If Eddie Hearn really cared about this fight, first of all it would have happened a long time ago, number one. Number two, he could finance the thing himself. The guy who’s supposed to be helping the fight has been hurting the fight the entire time. We’ll all know more in the next three or four days.”
Drug testing row
Hearn and Joshua also had concerns over when Fury was going to enrol in drug testing with VADA. Joshua's contract stated Fury would do so seamlessly after his win over Arslanbek Makhmudov in April, but Fury's team insisted they would enrol when their fight with Joshua was finalised.
Fury finally did so on Monday night as both fighters headed to London from their training camps. Fury has been preparing in Miami while Joshua has been training in Dubai.
