Anthony Joshua has accepted Tyson Fury’s offer of a 60-40 purse split for a potential megafight between the two British stars later this year.
The chances of the long-awaited all-British showdown finally happening moved just a little closer as AJ said he was fine with accepting just 40% of revenues as Fury is the defending WBC and lineal heavyweight champion.
His promoter Eddie Hearn said he had told team Fury the good news on Wednesday morning, but maintains there are a ton of details to iron out before we can start thinking this might actually happen.
AJ accepts Fury purse split offer
Hearn told IFL TV that his fighter had been offered the fight for early November, but countered by suggesting December 17. A date he says Fury’s promoters Queensberry have on hold for Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium.
Hearn, who says Fury turned a Joshua fight down in the past on a 60-40 split when AJ was champion, remains sceptical about the bout happening. But he is also hopeful it will and has described talks so far with George Warren as “quite productive”.
“60-40 was the offer as Tyson said and they want a rematch clause. They asked for a date at the beginning of November, which obviously I don’t know if that was a wind-up or whatever.
“We just went back this morning . We think, I think particularly, he deserves more than 40% but he’s happy. And I don’t make the decisions, he does. So I went back this morning and said we accept 60-40, we want that reversed in the rematch, rightfully so because you are the champion here, you want the bigger split etc, which I think is fair, and we wanna do the fight in December.
December 17 the preferred date
“Now interestingly they have December 17, Queensberry, held at the Millennium Stadium so that’s perfect for us. That was the date I think he was going to fight Dereck Chisora.”
One potential sticking point of course is the PPV TV rights, with Fury aligned with BT Sport and AJ with DAZN. Hearn though does not believe that will be a deal breaker.
“There’s a lot to discuss around AJ has a global deal with DAZN, but already me and George have been talking about ways to share that with BT etc.
“So in essence we accept the offer of 60-40 and we confirmed that this morning, lots of conversations had.”
The events of the last 48 hours have come as a massive surprise, just when a Fury vs Joshua clash had appeared further away than ever. AJ is currently out of the world title picture after losing for a second time to Oleksandr Usyk – his third defeat in his last five fights.
Hearn admitted it was not a fight he expected to happen in December – remember the two men came close to fighting in Saudi Arabia in August 2021, before Deontay Wilder won an arbitration ruling to force a trilogy fight with Fury.
