ANTHONY JOSHUA is one win away from a potential HALF-A-BILLION-POUND Tyson Fury two-fight mega deal.
Victory for Watford’s 34-year-old Olympic legend, over Daniel Dubois tonight at a 96,000 sell-out Wembley, will make him the hottest ticket in boxing.
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And – as long as Fury isn’t violently knocked out and injured in the Oleksandr Usyk rematch on December 21 – the wheels are already in motion for FINALLY making the fight everyone in England wants to see.
Our AJ may dream of getting one back on the 37-year-old Ukraine icon who dominated him twice to snatch away his WBA, IBF and WBO belts.
And a win over 27-year-old Dubois – with bright young trainer Ben Davison – would rightly make him a confident boost about a shot of revenge
But outside of Team AJ and cheerleader Eddie Hearn – there is no clamour at all to see Joshua vs Usyk 3 – especially when the best he can do is drag it back to 2-1 against a man who would be pushing 40 with four kids indoors to worry about.
For all of AJ’s incredible success and downright decency – London 2012’s legacy, his singlehanded revolution of British boxing, and saving of hundreds of local gyms with personal donations in lockdown, when the Government left the sport to die – it is a stain on his record that he never faced a peak and and undefeated Fury or Deontay Wilder.
He has been the golden goose and the cash cow in a sport that is usually a bit of a pigsty – his status as a British sport legend is cemented for eternity.
But across the Pond in America – which will return as the boxing Mecca when Saudi get bored or achieve their goal with funding fights – he is seen as a dud.
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The violent knockout loss on his one and only trip to the Big Apple, left a bitter taste over there and snatching a win back over Usyk will not help his reputation outside of his diehard fans.
But if he hangs up his gloves with the Gypsy King and Wilder on his record, then people will have the right to frown when his name is mentioned among the pantheon of greats.
But two great Fury fights – each likely to do around 2m pay-per-view sales at a guess of £30-a-pop – with one likely to sell out a 100,000 seater UK stadium at an average of maybe £500 a ticket – would be a spectacle right up there with the Fight of the Century, Thrilla in Manilla and Rumble in the Jungle.
The world will stop to watch the build-up – let alone the fight.
Imagine the antics John Fury would get up to, what Team Fury’s Brady Bunch of brothers and pals would say to AJ and his boardroom brotherhood.
The brilliant old stories will be dragged up.
The 2010 sparring session at Finchley where rising pro Fury offered his Rolex watch to any man who could floor him and an uppercut from the reformed bad-boy bricklayer almost clocked him.
The fight was almost made twice but collapsed over money and ego.
The bizarre time they bumped into each other in Marbella and – despite all his tirades and taunting – Fury was polite to his verbals victim.
Us hacks will definitely drag up the hilarious times Fury would video call Joshua totally unannounced and wind him up.
Carl Froch will back Fury and say Joshua is useless, John Fury will offer Froch a fight.
Wladimir Klitschko will land back on the scene and support Joshua.
It would be magnificent, hilarious, historic, slapstick, tense, dark and drenched in Saudi slush funds.
And every man, woman, child and dog and duck will want to be there – the trendies who reckons Oasis were never that good – might pretend they don’t care.
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