Bob Arum has claimed that Tyson Fury will not fight Anthony Joshua this summer after all, as the never-ending saga surrounding the potential heavyweight championship unification megafight continues.
Eddie Hearn, who promotes WBA, WBO, and IBF champion Joshua, has recently promised that an announcement for a date and venue could be coming very soon. Some believed Saudi Arabia had won the race to host the lucrative showdown, while one of three weekends across late July and early August was the apparent timeframe.
However, Arum, who co-promotes WBC and The Ring titleholder Fury and Frank Warren, has spent much of the last week claiming Hearn is way off base.
Now, the Top Rank chief has told The Telegraph that we may now have to wait until next year for the fight everybody wants, which would force both champs to find a new opponent in the meantime.
"It will take months for the Saudis to do their due diligence on such a huge deal," Arum said. "It is not just a site fee. There are ancillary demands from the Saudis stretching into the broadcast deals and other things. It could take months for it all to play out. It could even take until 2022, the way it looks right now. The fight in July or August is dead in the water as far as we are concerned.
“The two fighters need to go and have other fights this summer while the negotiations for that fight in the Middle East conclude. It is absurd what Hearn is saying that it is a done deal. If we had just done a site deal without all the other complications that have arisen, we would have a fight by now. Tyson Fury is fuming about it and is refusing to keep waiting."