Heavyweight silence set to be broken as Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder confirm their fates

This week the time of promises will surely come to an end, but will the fans get the fights they want?

There should be news this week to end the uneasy silence in the heavyweight division and with any luck the next fight for Anthony Joshua, Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury will be officially announced.

Three into one clearly does not work, even in a sporting business where a creative skill with numbers has long been an asset to the finest, wealthiest and trickiest promoters. There is certainly demand for any combination of fights, and the appropriate cash for the three to fight each other, but there is obviously no way all three will fight against each other on the same night and that means one of the three will, in theory, have to watch the other two get all of the glory. Fury, incidentally, has made the request to fight Wilder and Joshua on the same night.

This week somebody will make the numbers work and that is the way the boxing business has always operated: there is a popular fight, it’s on, it’s off, a deal is done, refined, rejected and then somebody plucks the satisfying digits from a dark hole to end the process. “You just keep offering more money until they accept,” Eddie Hearn, Joshua’s promoter, said last year. It really is that simple.

You see, numerical wizardry is a party trick of the best boxing promoters and Don King was the numbers – the unfathomable daily ritual that promises to make the poorest rich in American cities – Czar of Cleveland before beating a man to death, going to prison and graduating as the most powerful promoter in history.

King listened to Joe Frazier beating Muhammad Ali in the Fight of the Century in 1971 on a smuggled radio in his prison cell, and left the ring with George Foreman in 1973 after he had butchered Frazier to win the heavyweight world title in the Sunshine Showdown. As they say: “You do the maths.”

Joshua, Wilder and Fury have circled enough negotiating tables, peering over the shoulders of men striking deals, since last throwing a punch in anger that it is possible they are giddy from the impasse, weary from being asked when they are fighting next and who will be in the other corner.

Joshua, his profile as elusive and impressive as ever, looks mildly uncomfortable in public, like a politician at the end of a long dance of denial, knowing that at some point he will have to give a truthful answer and really hoping the mystical cavalry arrives to save him. Well, it’s just possible that in the next few days Joshua will hear that distant bugle approaching.

It looks increasingly likely that Joshua’s fight at Wembley in April will not happen and that a shift to Madison Square Garden in New York will replace the night. An April date for the unbeaten fighter, holder of three versions of the four recognised world titles, is now unlikely and he could step back in the ring as late as early June.

Brash American Jarrell Miller is being lined up to face Joshua in New York in June (Getty)

The American talker and native New Yorker, Jarrell Baby Miller, is the favourite for an offer to dance. It would be a wildly entertaining fight until Miller, who can jump up and down in weight by as much a four stone, runs out of gas, desire, insults and resistance in about six messy rounds. Miller will give Joshua the oxygen he needs to become a star in America, where the heavyweight riches have not yet been mined – a billion-dollar fight is not fantasy.

The endless offers to Fury and Wilder from Joshua’s team have delayed the formalities in Joshua’s life; his established routine of beating a good fighter in front of 70,000 or more fans, relaxing anonymously in Dubai, announcing another fight and moving to Sheffield to train for twelve weeks was ruined when Fury survived the last round against Wilder and left the ring a hero last December.

Joshua’s smooth passage has been scuppered by Fury’s re-emergence (Getty)

It was, from that truly emotional moment, impossible for anybody in the Joshua business to ignore Fury and, as harsh as it sounds, any opponent named for future slaughter came with the large warning: But it’s not Fury. It is the only blemish in Joshua’s boxing life so far and it’s not his fault Fury simply refused to lose. In Joshua’s eyes it was easy to ignore Fury in 2016, 2017 and eleven months of 2018 because he was just a deluded, fat man with problems and nobody really gave him a chance against Hercules from Watford.

Wilder and Fury, meanwhile, seems to be edging closer to formal disclosure, confirmation that it will be in an American city before the end of May is on its way. It’s a rematch that makes sense in a sport where talk really is cheap and if this fight fails to take place, and Joshua does not meet either Wilder or Fury next, then everybody involved – all will be screaming innocence at the flop and pointing fingers of blame at their rivals – need their heads knocking together.

Boxing at this level can often be confused with the promised land, a place where millions can transform a fighter forever, but often the loops a man must jump through can kill their hopes. This week the time of promises will surely end. Let’s hope we all get the fights we want.