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One of the biggest fights in boxing is finally booked.
Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua will fight “in the fourth quarter of this year” in the UK, Ring Magazine reporter Mike Coppinger revealed Monday. The fight, which will air globally on Netflix, is being bankrolled by Ring owner Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority. The location of the event has yet to be finalized.
Alalshikh has told Netflix that the Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua superfight won’t take place at London’s Wembley Stadium if Dua Lipa doesn’t perform at the event, one source told Front Office Sports. Ireland and Wales are also options for the heavyweight bout, but Netflix wants it at Wembley.
While there have been recent rumors that Saudi officials are deliberating about pulling funding for LIV Golf after this season, booking this fight affirms that Alalshikh and Ring are serious about competing in the highest levels of global boxing.
Alalshikh is the co-founder of Zuffa Boxing, the joint venture between Sela (which is owned by Saudi’s Public Investment Fund) and TKO. Zuffa has a five-year streaming deal with Paramount.
Alalshikh and TKO also collaborated on staging the high profile Terence Crawford vs. Canelo Alvarez event on Netflix last year. It was not immediately clear whether TKO is involved with the Fury-Joshua bout.
The highly-anticipated fight between Fury and Joshua was previously in question for a number of reasons.
Fury, 37, has retired from boxing multiple times, most recently doing so in January after losing twice to Oleksandr Usyk. Nevertheless, he returned to fight Arslanbek Makhmudov in a fight Alalshikh promoted for Netflix earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Joshua was involved in a car accident in Nigeria this past December in which two of his close friends, Sina Ghami and Latif “Latz” Ayodele, died. Like Fury, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist is no stranger to Netflix, which hosted Joshua’s knockout victory vs. Jake Paul last December.
Notably, putting this fight together also required Alalshikh to work with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom, where the 36-year-old Joshua is signed. Hearn has been griping about Zuffa Boxing, which signed fighter Conor Benn away from Matchroom in February. While most of Hearn’s ire has been directed toward Dana White, there was also one public back-and-forth tiff with Alalshikh.
Nevertheless, there was enough money at stake here to get a deal done, further establishing Alalshikh’s status as the biggest power player in boxing. And for Netflix, it adds yet another marquee fight to the streamer’s growing portfolio in combat sports.
