After months of everyone involved being resigned to the likelihood of Anthony Joshua vs. Tyson Fury being held somewhere other than the two heavyweight champions' native UK, Joshua's promoter Eddie Hearn has admitted there remains a chance that Wembley Stadium could still be in the running after all.
It appears that the UK's only chance of being able to offer a financial package to compete with lucrative site fees from various locations including the United States and multiple nations across Asia and the Middle East was if Wembley Stadium, site of Joshua's wins over Wladimir Klitschko and Alexander Povetkin, was able to use its full 90,000 capacity.
Of course, repeated returns to lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic have made that look impossible. However a strong start to the vaccination rollout leaves Britain optimistic of hosting Euro 2021 soccer matches at full capacity around the same timeframe as Joshua and Fury's intended first of two fights.
In an interview on Talksport on Thursday morning, Hearn said: “All things being equal, we wouldn’t even be having conversations with anywhere else in the world to be honest with you, we’d just be straight into Wembley.
“Obviously it is the biggest fight of our generation. It’s the moment of both fighters’ careers. We do have to look at opportunities and with the crowd restrictions it makes it even more difficult to generate the kind of money in the UK that you need.
“There have been a couple of conversations over the last 48 hours, I spoke to Bob Arum on Monday at length. We were talking about Wembley and he asked me about the restrictions and of course I told him about the Euros going into Wembley and talks of full capacity going in there in June/July.
“Could we get full capacity after the Euros, sort of middle/end of July? If we could, that does bring London and Wembley into the conversation.
“I’d love to find an excuse to do it in the UK and to find a way. I think most people to be honest with you, this includes the Middle East, they would prefer to do the fight back end of the year.
“Do we do the first one in London and the second one in the Middle East or wherever those interesting offers come from?
“There’s a lot of discussions to be had, we don’t rule out Wembley, but one thing we do know is the only way we could stage that fight in Wembley is with full capacity.
“There are some conversations going on with the government to see if that is an option. And, if that is an option, that will be presented to the fighters as well.”