Tyson Fury declared the fight off. Then he called out Oleksandr Usyk for a trilogy. Then Eddie Hearn accused a Netflix-backed promotional rival of trying to buy Anthony Joshua behind his back with a 90-minute ultimatum. By the end of a genuinely chaotic week, of all places, it was Cardiff that emerged as the peace deal everyone could live with.
The Fury-Joshua saga has lurched between “done” and “dead” so many times over the past decade that fans have learned not to trust either word. This week did nothing to break that pattern, but it did produce the clearest sign yet of where the fight is actually heading: Wales, not New York.
A week that started with Fury walking away
It began on Instagram. Fury posted that the Joshua fight was off again, claiming his old rival “has shat his pants yet again,” before pivoting to tag Oleksandr Usyk and pitch a trilogy fight at Madison Square Garden in November. Usyk’s camp was unmoved, rebuffing the offer and giving Fury little reason to think a third fight with the Ukrainian was realistic given how the first two went.
Fury has lost both previous meetings with Usyk, and a call-out via social media was never likely to change that dynamic. But it did the job Fury’s outbursts usually do: it put pressure back on the Joshua camp and reset the narrative heading into the weekend.
Hearn’s legal letter and the TKO row
The more substantial development came from Eddie Hearn, who confirmed he had sent a legal letter after accusing TKO, the promotional machine behind the push for a Madison Square Garden date, of going behind Matchroom’s back to offer Joshua money directly, with a reported 90-minute deadline attached to a proposed 20 November date in New York.
“TKO went around the back again to try and offer Joshua money to do the fight in America,” Hearn said. “It’s a dirty, dirty game, mate.” He put the odds of the fight landing on UK soil at 60 per cent, arguing that without outside interference the contract, which he maintains commits both fighters to a British venue, would already be signed and announced.
Cardiff emerges as the compromise
By midweek, Wembley’s well-worn curfew problems had pushed the conversation toward an unexpected alternative. Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, with its retractable roof and no 1am curfew restriction, has become the reported front-runner for the venue, with respected US boxing reporter Dan Rafael saying there is now “a strong chance” the fight lands there. Rafael added that those involved in negotiations expected the situation to be “resolved” within days.
Netflix, which had previously pushed for the Madison Square Garden option alongside Turki Alalshikh, is reported to have signed off on the switch to Wales. It would not be unfamiliar territory for Joshua, who has fought at the venue before, beating Carlos Takam there in 2017 and Joseph Parker in 2018. Fury has never fought in Cardiff, though he has never publicly ruled it out either.
What happens next
Dates are still moving. Some reports point to 28 November, others to 4 or 11 December, with the later options reportedly contingent on Cardiff securing an extended curfew from local officials to accommodate US broadcast windows. Nothing has been confirmed by Alalshikh, Netflix or either fighter’s team directly, and a joint press conference has yet to be scheduled – complicated further by Fury’s well-documented reluctance to share a stage with Joshua before fight week.
What is clear is that the contracts both camps have referenced all week are real, even if the venue attached to them keeps moving. For a fight that has collapsed and reassembled more times than either man would like to admit, a confirmed date in Cardiff would be the first genuinely solid ground either side has stood on in months.
