Tyson Fury v Anthony Joshua finally has a date. Most Saudi-paid fights kept theirs.
Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua will fight at Cardiff's Principality Stadium on 11 December. Every earlier plan for this fight since 2017 fell through.
What happened
Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua will fight at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff on Friday , with the main fight expected at about 2am on Saturday and shown worldwide on Netflix.
Saudi Arabia’s entertainment chief named the date. Turki Alalshikh, head of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority and owner of The Ring magazine, made the announcement. He said: “For 15 years no one has been able to make this fight”. The late start is timed for peak evening viewing in the United States. Both fighters meet the press in London on .
The two sides came close before. In 2021 Fury announced a fight with Joshua in Saudi Arabia, and a day later an arbitrator ordered him to fight Deontay Wilder instead. In 2022 they discussed at the same Cardiff stadium, but Joshua did not sign by Fury’s deadline. Early in 2026 both signed separate deals with Alalshikh.
The venue was the last argument. On Fury said the fight would be at Madison Square Garden in New York. Joshua’s contract said he would fight only in Britain. His promoter, Eddie Hearn, said: “If we hadn’t put that in the contract… we wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on. This fight would have been in America”.
Both men are former world champions, and both have lost twice to Oleksandr Usyk. Fury is 38, Joshua 36. In July each had a warm-up fight: Fury stopped a 46-year-old opponent in Thailand, and Joshua was knocked down twice in the first round in Jeddah before winning in the second. The Guardian calls it a non-title fight. Sky Sports and ESPN say the WBA title given up by Usyk will be at stake.
Sources: The Guardian, Sky Sports, ESPN (2), Al Jazeera (2)
The Pattern
Five of eight Saudi-paid fights went ahead as announced. We looked for heavyweight fights between two men who had each held a world title, signed by both sides, with the date and place named more than two months ahead, and paid for by Saudi Arabia’s entertainment authority. We found eight from 2019 to 2025. The same backer paid for all of them, and Joshua, Usyk and Fury appear several times.
Show the other 6 cases
The Read
History leans towards the fight going ahead. In five of the eight fights paid for by the same Saudi backer since 2019, the boxers met on the date and at the place first announced. Every one of those five took place where it was announced, and in none of the eight did money or the venue stop a fight once the date was named.
The record has limits. One backer paid for all eight fights, and Fury, Joshua and Usyk each appear several times, so these are not eight separate tests. Both men are now over 35, Joshua was knocked down twice in July, and in 2024 a cut in sparring pushed Fury’s fight with Usyk back by three months.
The failures came either the day after a date was named or in the last two weeks before the fight, when a fighter was hurt or ill. None came in the middle of training, so the weeks before matter most.
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