Would Anthony Joshua step aside to allow Tyson Fury to fight Oleksandr Usyk?

Not long ago, Anthony Joshua was on the verge of an undisputed heavyweight title fight. During that time, there were step-aside talks to make it happen. Would he be willing to wait his turn for history to be made?

Joshua is scheduled to face off against Oleksandr Usyk this spring in a rematch for the WBA, IBF, WBO, and IBO heavyweight titles. Tyson Fury, the WBC heavyweight champion, wants to face the winner. There may also be a chance Fury faces off against Dillian Whyte. Top Rank’s Bob Arum is willing to do whatever it takes to make the undisputed fight happen. He believes the situation is a mess that may be able to be sorted out.

“It is total chaos,” Arum told talkSPORT. “What’s happening is just promises coming out of the Middle East about doing a unified fight with Usyk and Fury, and is Dillian Whyte gonna step aside. And people that have absolutely no contractual ties – like Frank Warren’s Queensberry and our Top Rank do – are getting involved.

“It’s a typical terrible kind of situation, but hopefully it’ll get sorted out and probably it will get sorted out with a purse bid on Friday.”

Fury, a lineal heavyweight champion, beat Deontay Wilder in February 2020 for the WBC title. He beat Wilder in a rematch via knockout in October to retain the title. There have been issues regarding purse bids between him and Whyte, as the latter wants a 55/45 purse split after an initial 80/20 split was announced.

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Usyk, the former undisputed cruiserweight champion, beat Joshua in his third heavyweight bout in September. Joshua’s management team has told talkSPORT that Eddie Hearn, Joshua, and others rejected a step-aside option.

“In complete honesty, me and Eddie have had conversations with Freddie [Cunningham, Joshua’s manager] and a few of the other guys,” David KD Ghansa said. “The day that we actually slightly put it to him, we got shut down – it was a complete shutdown. AJ knows that, as a management team, we are going to explore all options for him. But the main thing is that he is focused on putting right what he needs to.”

Hearn, however, has told Boxing Social that there may be a chance that further negotiations could result in the undisputed title fight first. The purse bid for Fury-Whyte is set for Friday, and Hearn is willing to see how it goes. His main statement was to wait and see and “expect the unexpected,” meaning anything is possible.

At one point, Joshua and Fury agreed in principle to fight one another in 2021 for the undisputed titles. Mandatory challengers in Usyk and Wilder halted those plans following a ruling by an arbitrator