It appears Anthony Joshua vs. Tyson Fury is on the cusp of becoming official.
Eddie Hearn, who promotes WBA, WBO and IBF heavyweight champion Joshua, has revealed that his fighter and WBC titleholder Fury could be putting pen to paper as early as the first half of February, allowing progress to continue on other important aspects of their eagerly-anticipated showdown, such as the exact date and venue.
Hearn told iFL TV: “I hope that we can finalise contracts in the next two weeks.
“And then the plan from there is to go out and start discussing with the various sites that have approached to stage this fight.
“What we wanna do is make sure we’ve got a deal papered to move forwards and start having these conversations, and then lock in the venue and the date.
“There isn’t a lot to be sorted. We’re in a good place. I believe we’ll have these contracts finalised in the next couple of weeks.
“I believe this fight will take place in June.”
This process is likely to mean that there will be two official announcements from Hearn's Matchroom Boxing as well as Fury's promoters Bob Arum and Frank Warren.
One will be that the contracts are signed, and the other will be to announce the official date and location, once that part has also been finalised.
All three promoters have recently admitted that, as much as they'd love to have had the two Brits contest one of the U.K.'s biggest ever showdowns on home soil, the COVID-19 pandemic and various sanctioning fees involved mean a lucrative overseas site fee is the likely scenario.
Hearn continued: “We wanna make sure we have the deal in place.
“And that will be the route map for this fight – to hopefully make an announcement in the next couple of weeks to say, ‘This fight is signed and done.’
“Let’s make one thing clear, this is the biggest fight in the history of British boxing, this may be the biggest heavyweight fight of all time. This is the undisputed heavyweight world championship.
“Once we’ve done that, we’ll say, ‘The fight is on, start getting very, very excited and now we’ll be going out and finalising the venue.’ Because what we don’t wanna do is [not answer] all these questions that keep coming.
“I wanna give you the news, I wanna tell you that this fight’s on and now we’re gonna be giving you a date. It’ll be, ‘It’s planned for June and we’ll be giving you the site and the [specific] date in the very near future.’ That’s the news I hope to be able to give you in the next couple of weeks.”