The long awaited bout between Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder has finally been confirmed.
The undefeated heavyweight champions will settle the score at some point in 2018 after promoter Eddie Hearn today confirmed talks have started for a fight next year.
Joshua’s IBF, IBO and WBA titles and Wilder’s WBC title will be on the line, as the two fighters hope to unify the division, staking a claim as undisputed champion.
Whoever comes out victorious between Joshua or Wilder, it will bring them one step closer to holding all belts, leaving only New Zealand’s WBO Champion, Joseph Parker, the only challenger left standing in the way to unify the whole division.
The last heavyweight to hold all belts, albeit briefly, was the unorthodox – if not controversial – Tyson Fury. Categorically, the last undisputed heavyweight champ was Britain’s own Lennox Lewis, even though it was short-lived.
AJ and ‘The Bronze Bomber’ could join the esteemed company of legends like Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Tyson and Marciano should one of them emerge victorious.
The two have been baiting each other since AJ stripped Charles Martin of the IBF title in 2016 before then going on to beat former heavyweight champ, Wladimir Klitschko, in their all-out-classic in 2017 for the vacant WBA and IBO heavyweight titles.
Wilder has held and defended, with sheer ferocity, the WBC title since 2014, after stripping Bermane Stiverne.
Stiverne has been the only fighter to take him the full 12 rounds – back in 2015 – but since then Wilder has crushed opponents with such devastating ease and brutality, it’s considered illegal in some States.
Anthony Joshua currently holds a respectable 20-0 win record, while Wilder commands a superior 39-0, 38 of those wins coming via knockout.
While we’re wary of billing this as the fight of the century (remember how much we hyped up Pacquiao-Mayweather), there’s no way you can’t say you’ve not been looking forward to this!
We’re finally going to see two fighters in peak condition go toe-to-toe with one another.
It’s a fight which will most certainly bring the heavyweight division back to the forefront of main event boxing.
