Deontay Wilder, Anthony Joshua to fight on same December card
Once upon a time, the top heavyweight boxers in the United States and United Kingdom were destined to meet in the ring for total supremacy in their division. How times have dramatically changed.
On Wednesday, it was announced that two former world champions, Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua, will fight in December. However, they won't be fighting one another. They will be featured on the same card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on December 23 in what appears to be a stacked event.
Wilder will face New Zealand's Joshua Parker, a veteran who has gone toe-to-toe with some of the top fighters in the division in the past, including Joshua. Meanwhile, Joshua will scrap with Sweden's Otto Wallin, whose lone defeat in his career came at the hands of Tyson Fury.
The fighters spoke about their next bouts during a press conference on Thursday, and the event marked the only time that both men have publicly stood on the dais together so far.
Wilder and Joshua once ruled the heavyweight division, with Wilder holding the WBC championship now around the waist of Fury and Joshua being the champion for the other three major sanctioning bodies (the IBF, WBA and WBO). During their period as undefeated champions, both men verbally sparred about one another through boxing media and online after each man racked up victories. There were fleeting moments of negotiations between their respective camps for a unification match, with Joshua's demands of having the fight take place in his native London and squabbles over splitting the purse appearing to be sticking points in the talks.
Yet all of that chatter went out the window slowly but surely after both men took big losses on the chin. It was Joshua who was on the other end of perhaps the biggest upset in boxing history back in June 2019 when Andy Ruiz Jr. - a replacement for then-suspended Jarrell Miller - shocked the world at Madison Square Garden in New York, putting the first formal blemish on the British pugilist's record. Joshua regained his belts from Ruiz at the end of 2019, but Oleksandr Usyk dominated him to become champion in 2021. Usyk beat Joshua in a rematch a year later.
Wilder's fall from the peak came from a trilogy of fights with Fury between 2019 and 2021, first with an entertaining draw, then with two resounding defeats.
Though Wilder will be fighting in Saudi Arabia for the first time, this would be the third business trip for Joshua in country that has arguably become the biggest stage for boxing outside of U.S. or U.K. in relatively quick order. While this card appears to be the last hurdle before a fight between them, another wrinkle could be thrown in these delayed plans, courtesy of the WBC.
The concerns about sportswashing by the Saudi kingdom haven't gone away, but clearly the paychecks haven't either.
In addition to these well-known heavyweights, light heavyweight king Dmitry Bivol will defend his titles against Lyndon Arthur.
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