RIATH AL-SAMARRAI: This is the untold behind-the-scenes story of the rumbling Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua fight talks – and how much the pair stood to lose under disgraceful idea to stage bout in New York

I remember the first time I reported that cogs were turning on a fight between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury. It was a good while ago – almost 12 years, actually.

The date was December 2, 2014. I’d spoken that evening to Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, when both his guy and Fury were unbeaten and neither had fought for a world title.

Hearn, then and now, was bullish in spelling out his plan. ‘It is a fight I would love to make next summer,’ he told me. ‘People ask if AJ is ready to fight Fury but, to be honest, is Fury ready to fight AJ?’

It was a nice line for the back page and ultimately good for one thing alone – proving the timeless point that, in boxing, you should only believe it when you see it.

But here we are, trapped in a different version of the same dance all these years on. 

Because as of Friday, the fight was on and, according to Hearn, talks had been resurrected to take it to Wembley Stadium. A day earlier it was heading to New York’s Madison Square Garden on November 20 and Joshua’s team were floating the possibility of canning the whole thing in protest.

They were furious that a contract signed three months ago, stipulating a UK venue, was being broken so that Netflix could have a cosier fit with American viewing hours. The Saudi powerbrokers for the fight, led by Turki Alalshikh, were evidently happy to side with the broadcaster, to hell with the British audience for a British fight, and ostensibly that is what sent Hearn and Joshua into a spin.

Fury and Joshua are closer than ever to trading blows, with signatures on contracts, but they are still squabbling on the details

Time will tell if they get their way – Wembley conversations may have reopened, but it isn’t the only factor at play in this game of brinksmanship. Far from it.

I’ve had conversations this week with people around the deal and can flesh out a few of the details behind the chaos, which boils down to a boring three-letter word. Tax.

It’s something Hearn himself has alluded to in interviews this week – he mentioned that tax conditions in the US were unfavourable for Joshua. The information I’ve since received illustrates what that would look like in real language.

In short, it is my understanding that Joshua’s team have somewhere close to 10 million reasons not to want the fight in New York. Explained in a slightly longer form: if it is staged in London, the tax for a pair of non-UK residents would be around 20 per cent and in the US ‘withholding tax’ is around 30 per cent.

That is a significant jump with the purses involved – I’m told Joshua and Fury are in line to receive approximately $100m each (around £74m), so a $10m shortfall on the net amounts they would take back to Dubai and the Isle of Man respectively has not gone unnoticed.

As far as we can tell, Fury has not kicked up a fuss on the US tax. Publicly, anyway. But Joshua’s team viewed it as a hefty pay cut on what he signed, which fed into their wider anger that the fight was being shifted abroad.

Irrespective of which motivation weighed more, it seems that some level of sense might yet prevail – if the fight lands in the UK, that can only be a good thing. Hearn was very much in the right to paint it as a disgrace if it goes anywhere else.

But, again, we are in the realms of believing it when we see it. And especially in consideration of the individuals who hold true power behind this fight. That would be Netflix, who presumably still see greater value in the US, and the Saudi organisers, Sela, who have been steered on this fight by Alalshikh.

If fight is staged in the US, Joshua and Fury are set to pay millions more in tax. Fury and his promoter Frank Warren have not kicked up a fuss on issue – publicly at least

Turki Alalshikh (centre) claimed that he was trying to stage the fight in London back in July, though this may only have been lip service

Alalshikh, you might note, has already performed a curious role in the London saga. It was early July when he began applying pressure to City Hall, flagging that curfews in the capital would need tweaking to enable a US-friendly start time. 

Writing on X, his favoured means of communication, he posted: ‘Hopefully a positive statement from the Mayor of London’s office about a later start time if Fury v Joshua is in London, as so far we have been told it is not possible.’

I might add here that the latter sentiment landed as something of a surprise to those on the receiving end – I’m told no request was made by Sela to mayor Sadiq Khan until mid-August. When those conversations did finally occur, sources tell me it was made clear by the mayor’s office that a late start wouldn’t be a hurdle. Khan has since gone public in saying he wants the fight in London.

A plausible theory, held by a few parties, is that the Sela overture was a gesture. A means of being able to claim: ‘We tried.’ Lip-service, in other words, and flapping lips in boxing tend to serve no one.

Hopefully this fight proves the exception to the rule. Hopefully it does go to London. Hopefully the pressure applied by Hearn and Joshua, for whatever reason they prioritised, is decisive. Anything else would be an utter sham and a betrayal of British sport.

But this is boxing. And for more than a decade, one excuse after another has been found to keep these two fighters apart – the threshold for tedium was breached long before any contract. If that extends indefinitely, the question of New York or London might be rendered slightly irrelevant.