Tyson Fury sits as comfortable betting favorite over Anthony Joshua ahead of potential fight
With talk of a blockbuster, long-anticipated heavyweight championship fight between reigning WBC titleholder, Tyson Fury, and former world champion, Anthony Joshua ramping up over the recent weeks, odds have been slapped across multiple markets as the British duo both welcome an end-of-year showdown in the UK.
Fury, the current undisputed WBC heavyweight champion, is on the verge of snapping his short-lived retirement from active competition, with the Manchester native most recently retaining his championship courtesy of a massive April knockout win against Dillian Whyte at Wembley Stadium.
As for Joshua, the former WBA and WBO heavyweight champion, slumped to his third career loss earlier this summer, dropping a clear-cut, split decision loss to Ukrainian champion, Oleksandr Usyk in an immediate Saudi Arabia rematch back in August.
However, despite Joshua’s recent slip in form which has seen him drop a pair of judging losses to the aforenoted, Usyk, and a stunning, upset knockout loss to Andy Ruiz in his US debut back in June 2019, fans are still clamouring for an all-British clash of Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua.
In the time since his loss to Usyk, while a fight with Fury seemed dead in the water amid his string of back-to-back losses, Joshua found himself linked with a potential fight against a would-be common-foe, former champion, Deontay Wilder – whose continued career in the sport is unknown beyond his scheduled return fight against Robert Helenius next month.
In recent weeks, Tyson Fury has revealed an offer is on the table for Joshua to fight him as soon as December in a sensational end-of-year clash in Cardiff, however, the status of a fight between the two is still widely up in the air. If you are, however, interested in online sports betting, Fury can be backed at -400 against Joshua as a favorite, with the latter currently sat at +300.
Amid the emergence of the likes of Fury, Joshua, and Wilder atop the heavyweight division across the sport, many within the community welcomed the prospect of the trio tangling in the future, in what was widely viewed as a massive period for heavyweight boxing.
However, from those three names, only one combination of fights has played out – three times, in fact, with Fury twice defeating Wilder with knockout wins following an initial split draw.
Tyson Fury teases fight with Mahmoud Charr, instead
Whilst Fury has since claimed that an unofficial, self-imposed deadline for a fight with Joshua has come and gone, an unlikely candidate to welcome the polarizing WBC heavyweight best from retirement, has come in the form of former title challenger, Mahmoud Charr.
The Lebanon-born contender has received a reply from Fury to boot, who himself praised him for his willingness to fight, however, many have questioned if Joshua is actually frozen out of a fight with Fury, given the topsy-turvy nature of matchmaking in the sport.
Joshua has since entered the WBC heavyweight rankings at #6, and while a fight with Fury appears less than clear in terms of a timeline at the moment, a potential December 3. clash of the British stars will still go a long way before it is comfortably ruled-out in the coming days and weeks.
