After Anthony Joshua’s comeback victory over Jermaine Franklin in London over the weekend, he issued a challenge to his long-time adversary Tyson Fury for a potential showdown after the final bell. However, Anthony Joshua has been instructed by David Haye to avoid a ring meeting with Tyson Fury and instead rematch Dillian Whyte.
Joshua’s heavyweight comeback fight was held at the O2 stadium in London on Saturday night. The battle was against Jermaine Franklin, and they fought to a points victory. Joshua was looking to rebuild momentum after the fight. Many people anticipated that AJ would knock the American out of the ring, but the challenger was tough and resilient, which allowed him to make it to the end of the fight.
After the bout, Joshua’s boisterous home crowd wanted him to issue a challenge to Fury, and he complied, stating that he was willing to enter into discussions for a rematch with Fury in which the WBC title would be on the line. Despite this, former world champion Haye thinks that a rematch with Whyte would be the best next step considering his performance on his own soil.
“The next time I want to see him, I want to see him in with Dillian. That is not the kind of performance to have the next time you fight Tyson Fury “After Joshua’s latest victory, Haye evaluated his alternatives and shared his thoughts with iFL TV. “If he went out there and finished him off in the first couple of rounds, then that would be acceptable. But in my perspective, he needs a performance that is significantly better than that in order to compete against Tyson.
It didn’t appear as though he was trying to knock out his opponent in any of the rounds. He was content with his dominating performance in each round. I wished for him to put a significant amount of pressure on this young man and corner him against the ropes. I’d like to see him go up against Dillian because we all know that their fight is going to be exciting. That is a high-profile bout that will get everyone’s blood pumping, and the victor of that fight will then get the opportunity to fight Fury. But, Fury is considering a bout with Usyk anyway – or is he?”
After Joshua’s defeat to Usyk earlier in 2018, a rematch with Tyson Fury was scheduled to take place at the end of the year. However, negotiations broke down after the challenger missed the deadline set by the “Gypsy King” to sign the contract. It is common knowledge that the former Olympic athlete will enter the battle as the underdog due to his string of recent defeats; yet, he will enter with new hope under the tutelage of trainer Derrick James.
It is likely that Joshua will want to avoid a rematch with Fury in favour of rebuilding his career and pursuing other fights before a potential showdown with Fury. One of these fights might be with IBF mandatory challenger Filip Hrgovic. In spite of the fact that many people believe he should wait before pursuing Fury, the 33-year-old boxer challenged his adversary to shut up and get in touch with him about settling the scores between them.
He advised me to put all of that s*** away. Let’s go out of here if we’re going to f***ing fight. Just shut the f*** up and accept the fact that I am feeling this way because I have to conserve my strength for the upcoming battle. I’ll be real, I’ll be real. I hold the gentleman in esteem. He has accomplished a great deal. It’s just that I don’t think it’s necessary for me to vocally trash talk someone else in order to feel better about myself. In a battle of wits with Tyson Fury, you are going to come out on the losing end.”