Tyson Fury v Anthony Joshua: Beyond the numbers ahead of superfight

Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua appear set to meet in the biggest fight in British boxing history this June.

They are poised to put pen to paper imminently to confirm one of the richest bouts ever made - it is expected to pay them in the region of $100million each.

Fury is now 32 years old; Joshua is 31; each man is in his heavyweight prime. Between them, they own the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO belts. All of the marbles.

For the first time in the history of the noble art, we should have an undisputed heavyweight champion who owns all four major belts. A new Golden Age of heavyweight boxing is upon us.

With a fight of this magnitude, there is an unmistakable buzz of anticipation, and everyone inevitably has an opinion as to who will triumph.

Yet before battle lines are formally drawn, let us take a moment to interrogate the respective fistic CVs of both men and determine who has the better record going in. It is an emotive topic which inevitably ignites debate given how AJ and ‘The Gypsy King’ have lit up the sport in recent years.

If we are purely crunching numbers, Fury has a 30-0-1 record while Joshua is now 24-1 after that sizzling stoppage victory over Kubrat Pulev last December.

However, it was the veteran American sports commentator Vin Scully who once said: “Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination”.

Sometimes you have deep dive beyond these numbers to appreciate someone’s achievements.

Sven Ottke, for example, retired with a perfect 34-0 professional record. Will anyone though seriously rate the German as a better super-middleweight than say, Roy Jones Jr?

Perhaps inevitably, the war of words ahead of this superfight is starting to heat up. Joshua has vowed to take Fury’s “head off his shoulders” when they finally clash, while Fury responded by telling Fox Miami earlier this year: "We'll see if he's got the guts to try and do it when I'm stood in the ring in front of him. I don't believe he has”.

AJ’s promoter Eddie Hearn has added further fuel to the fire by casting doubt on Fury’s achievements to this point.

“I mean it's laughable when you compare the two resumes, but it's in black and white for everyone to see,” claimed the Matchroom Boxing supremo.

Hearn obviously feels his man’s record is superior. To be fair it’s quite the record. The 2012 Olympic champion enjoyed a meteoric rise through the pro ranks, winning the IBF title with a facile KO of ‘Prince’ Charles Martin in just his 16th paid fight. He has also vanquished the likes of Dillian Whyte, Dominic Breazeale, Wladimir Klitschko, Joseph Parker, Alexander Povetkin, Carlos Takam and the aforementioned Pulev.

Due to winning a legitimate version of the world heavyweight title within three years of turning over, Joshua has spent the lion’s share of his career to this point mixing in elite company.

So if we are purely looking at opponents faced, you could rationally argue that Joshua's record is deeper in the sense that he has fought more top-10 fighters than Fury. Doing a head count, the towering Londoner has fought and indeed stopped more world-rated opponents than his British rival.

Fury has enjoyed some unforgettable nights, but if you take Klitschko and Deontay Wilder out of the equation, his best win is probably a coin toss between Otto Wallin or Dereck Chisora.

Joshua’s fight with Whyte, which was not even for a world title, was a sizzler and the way he closed the show against Breazeale was all kinds of impressive too.

That unforgettable Wembley success over Klitschko remains Joshua’s standout win, but the giant Ukrainian had lost his titles and already had an unbeaten run stretching back over a decade snapped a few years before that by Mr Fury.

Klitschko was probably not in his ‘prime’ for either of those two fights, but it’s undeniable that Fury fought a younger version of Wlad, in his own back yard and a Klitschko who had not tasted defeat for 11 years to that point. By the time he gloved up at Wembley, he was unmistakably on the wane, though he produced a stirring final effort befitting of a champion.

It’s absolutely no contest that Joshua’s up-and-downer with the Ukrainian legend was a more fan-friendly fight. But we are of the opinion that Fury going to Dusseldorf in 2015 and winning a chess match was actually the better win.

Joshua’s victory over Povetkin in September 2018 meanwhile is a win which does not get the credit it deserves. A motivated Povetkin is a tough night’s work for any heavyweight in history, and yet a dominant AJ stopped him in seven rounds at Wembley that night.

Both Fury and Joshua owe a debt of gratitude to the Russian too remember, as Povetkin’s brutal KO of Whyte last year removed the massive road block of ‘The Body Snatcher’ as WBC mandatory challenger. That result also makes Joshua’s win over the Russian look that much better.

Joshua has fought solid opposition consistently, but have some of his wins been aggrandised because of the build-up they received from his TV paymasters?

For example, Hearn seems to seriously overrate Breazeale, who was knocked out inside a round by Wilder less than three years after AJ beat him, and has done precious little since.

Joseph Parker meanwhile lost his next fight to Whyte after ceding his WBO world crown to Joshua, while Takam’s career has also regressed. Were these fighters all that to begin with? Or did meeting and being dealt with by Joshua leave a permanent mark on them?

A clear negative for AJ is that since winning the IBF strap against Martin nearly half a decade ago, he has yet to box a fighter who is universally regarded as the number one heavyweight challenger, or even number two.

He famously lost to Andy Ruiz Jr in that seismic upset in America and then regained the belts in Saudi. But even when knocking over the likes of Povetkin, Klitschko, Breazeale and latterly Pulev, boxing aficionados knew the only true tests that mattered would come against Wilder or Fury.

It probably says more about the broken state of the sport itself, or how the spurious sanctioning bodies continue to muddy the waters, but you would just not get a scenario in any other sport where the champion does not meet the #No1 or #No2 challenger for approaching five years.

There is no denying Joshua has been moved well in his career, and his path to this point has been much less complicated than Fury’s.

Let us not forget that after ‘The Gypsy King’ beat Klitschko, he imploded on a personal level as he struggled with mental health issues. That win in Germany should have catapulted him into superstardom, instead he sunk into the abyss.

Looking back, perhaps he did not want to be loved so much as to be understood, but the way he has faced his personal demons and once again climbed to the peak of the sport is meritorious in the extreme.

If we accept Joshua has fought solid opposition consistently, we must also agree that Fury has been less risk-averse and won twice against a genuinely elite world-title rival away from home. As well as emerging only with a draw from that controversial first Wilder meeting back in 2018.

That 2015 Klitschko fight will never be mistaken for ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’. However, Fury went in as a 4/1 underdog on the day as he out-hustled and out-thought an active, long-reigning future Hall of Famer in his own back yard.

It has been written that if Klitschko had fought Fury the way he fought Joshua, he may not have lost his belts that night in Germany. We can’t subscribe to that view. Klitschko did not fight Fury the way he fought Joshua, primarily because Fury would not allow it.

The phrase ‘styles make fights’ is one of the oldest clichés in sport, because it’s actually true.

Furthermore, the fact Fury didn’t have to pick himself up off the floor, or suffer any collateral damage at all in the fight, adds weight to the argument that Tyson’s was the superior, albeit less exciting, performance.

Agreeing to fight Wilder when very few top-rated heavyweights fancied the job, not long after spiralling to 28 stone in weight and wrestling with thoughts of suicide, speaks volumes about Fury and his competitive spirit.

He should have got the nod in that 2018 clash in Los Angeles against a man many at the time were lauding as the hardest-punching heavyweight in history. A man who had been WBC champ for half a decade.

It was a miraculous performance given what Fury had endured in the months and years before, and it was entirely fitting he should clamber back to his feet in the final stanza after being viciously knocked down and looking for all the world to be a lost cause.

What’s indisputable is the fact that Fury has beat two main players in the heavyweight division, away from home. Something AJ has yet to do.

Joshua has never been in anybody's back yard and impressed. His fight with Ruiz Jr in New York was a disaster, and that horror show at Madison Square Garden (down multiple times and stopped on his feet in June 2019) diminishes his record greatly.

To lose to a less than stellar opponent - even though he subsequently gained revenge - is a clear negative in terms of his record and fighting reputation. This fight against Fury is the first time as a professional Joshua will glove up and enter the ring as a betting underdog. Fury has done so three times already in his career, and he remains unbeaten.

To conclude then, while it is clear that AJ has fought solid opposition consistently after blazing a trail through the heavyweight division, Fury has taken the biggest risks.

It is our argument that while Joshua has the deeper overall record, Fury clearly has the more outstanding performances.

Looking at their records and the names on there, if you are talking about quantity, then you would say Joshua. If you are talking quality, it has to be Fury who has the more eye-catching wins in Klitschko and Wilder II.

Beating ‘Dr Steelhammer’ on the road while barely taking a clean shot, and pulverising Wilder into submission in that unforgettable second fight, allied to the fact he is still unbeaten, swings the argument in Fury’s favour.

It is all massively subjective of course. The only way to find a definitive answer to this question is for these two generational talents to finally meet each other.

The world is waiting...