New Anthony Joshua vs Tyson Fury location frontrunner is bad news for British boxing fans

Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury look like they will be heading stateside after all.

The British heavyweight titans won their respective tune-up fights last month to set up the long-awaited bout, tentatively pencilled in for November.

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Joshua-Fury had initially been mooted to take place at London’s Wembley Stadium.

However, efforts to make the fight at the 90,000-seater have seemingly fallen by the wayside due to a strict 11pm curfew, which would scupper Turki Alalshikh and Netflix’s plans to stage the fight at US primetime.

According to BoxingScene, New York is now the frontrunner to host the fight, meaning Brits will have to stay up until the early hours of the morning to watch the bout.

It comes after Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn told The Athletic last week: “They’ve had a decent offer from MSG [Madison Square Garden].

Addressing the time zone, he added: “I think the aim would be to do it at three o’clock in the morning UK time, which would be 10pm in the U.S. (Eastern Time).

“They want the fight in the U.S. — Turki, Nick Khan, Netflix.

“I think Netflix feel like it’ll do a bigger number in the U.S. if it’s on at prime time there.

“We want the fight in the UK. We’ve insisted that within the contract, and if that’s going to change, then we need to have a conversation about it.

“You can’t just announce that it’s in the U.S. — though they might do that — but that would be a big problem if that’s the case.

“So hopefully if that is what they want to do, we’ll have a chat and then see where we get to.”

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All hope is not lost just yet

As Hearn rightly points out, Joshua’s contract currently states that his bout with Fury must take place on UK soil.

The Matchroom Boxing chief has admitted, though, that he is open to renegotiation if a beneficial agreement can be reached.

There is no such clause in Fury’s side of the deal, nor does ‘The Gypsy King’ appear to have a preference on where the contest takes place.

“It doesn’t matter to me where the fight is,” Fury told iFL TV.

“We are called prizefighters for a reason. If the fight is on Mars, we are going to go there.

“Whoever is paying the money gets to decide where they are putting it.”

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