Joshua vs. Fury Is Finally Booked — And It’s Arriving a Decade Too Late

The Tyson Fury–Anthony Joshua fight is finally locked in for Riyadh Season in 2026. And somehow, after all the years of ducking, delays, posturing, and missed windows, it still feels less like destiny fulfilled and more like boxing admitting it ran out of time.

Ring Magazine broke the news that Fury will unretire to face Joshua next year, though everyone knows where this really came from. Turki Alalshikh didn’t need to put his name on the press release — the fingerprints are obvious. Saudi money didn’t make this fight compelling. It made it unavoidable.

But let’s be honest about what’s being sold here.

This is no longer the collision of unbeaten titans that should’ve happened in 2018 or 2019. This is a salvage operation. Fury is coming off back-to-back losses to Oleksandr Usyk, preceded by a performance so flat against Francis Ngannou that it permanently dented his mystique. Joshua, meanwhile, still has to get past Jake Paul in December — an absurd sentence that shouldn’t exist in the same universe as a “Battle of Britain.”

That detail matters. A lot.

If Joshua stumbles against Paul, the entire Fury fight turns into a farce overnight. Ring leaking this now feels premature at best, careless at worst. Boxing has a long history of tripping over its own hype, and this is how it usually starts.

Fury is also expected to take a tune-up before Joshua, which tells you everything you need to know about where he’s at. The version that fought Usyk last December looked slow, soft, and strangely uninterested — less “Gypsy King,” more retired billionaire going through the motions. Ring rust isn’t the issue anymore. Time is.

By the time these two finally meet, it’ll likely be late 2026. At that point, the fight won’t be about supremacy. It’ll be about narrative control — whose decline looks less severe, whose brand survives intact.

For American audiences, the excitement has already cooled. Joshua is remembered for being flattened by Daniel Dubois. Fury is remembered for losing twice to Usyk and arguably three straight if you count Ngannou. You can dress it up with history, flags, and slogans, but the truth is uncomfortable:

This fight used to be inevitable.
Now it’s just inevitable because there’s nothing left to wait for.

And that tells you everything.