It’s a disgrace we’ve had to wait this long for Joshua vs Wilder

Deontay Wilder and Anthony Johsua have been circling each other and making threats for nearly a decade in the heavyweight boxing business.

They were eyeing each other one more time after Wilder’s win against Derek Chisora in their unique testimonial slugfest on Saturday night at the O2. The win salvaged Wilder’s career and once again set in motion the endless talk about a fight against Joshua.

“He’s still too scared to fight me,” insisted Wilder when he left the ring. 

Joshua had been ringside to watch his friend Chisora; it was his first public appearance in the UK since the horror crash last December which killed two of his closest friends. Joshua has not yet made an official statement of intent regarding a continuation of his boxing career, but several fights have been mentioned, including a long overdue clash with Wilder.

The harsh truth is that the fight should have happened at any point between April of 2016 and June of 2019, a period of three years and two months when Wilder and Joshua were both heavyweight champions of the world. It is a disgrace that it never took place at that time.

Deals for the fight were made and then broken, stories invented and still the pair continued down their individual paths, each beating a long list of men; Wilder made 10 defences of his WBC title and Joshua made six of the various belts he held at the same time.

There is a debate about the quality of opposition they each faced – the argument is moot because without doubt they would have each been the best man the other had met.

In many ways, that is close to a perfect fight; both champions, both the best at their weight, both young, both unbeaten and both without any obvious rivals.

At the peak of their reigns, the negotiations were frustrating to witness as round after round of talks and empty promises collapsed. They were matched against somebody else, time and time again, and each new fight delivered a round of accusations and abuse.

It is one of boxing’s most disturbing failures: they were two men at their peaks, their rivals in heaps at their feet and with no other obvious challengers. They only had each other, but still it was never made.

Wilder was champion for six more months after Joshua lost his world titles, but even back then in the middle of 2019, it looked like a fight could still be made between the great rivals.

Instead, Joshua went for a rematch with Andy Ruiz and then back-to-back fights with Oleksandr Usyk; Wilder went for a trilogy with Tyson Fury.

The pair certainly can’t ever be accused of avoiding hard fights and taking the easy option. They just had a problem with each other.

Each time the fight collapsed, both teams claimed the moral high ground in the sad breakdown of negotiations. It was always money behind the latest rift, and that is one of boxing’s oldest stories.

In late 2023, the landscape changed too late for Wilder and Joshua when the Saudi Arabian boxing revolution started, and fights that could not and would not have been made, suddenly fell into place. It was the money; it’s always the money.

So now, exactly a decade on, Joshua and Wilder are back to circling each other after a chance encounter at the end of Saturday’s fight.

Wilder has won only three of his last seven fights, and Joshua’s future is still far from secure, but a fight between the pair seems to have once again captured the imagination of the boxing public. And, it must be said, it might just make crazy cash.

Wilder is now 40, Joshua is 36 and, assuming the latter fights on, they are both in need of an opponent; Joshua has been linked with Fury in a match-up that has been planned, discussed and dropped almost as many times as the Wilder vs Joshua fight.

In boxing’s current fluid world, where no match is out of bounds, any fight, any pairing and at any location is a possibility: Usyk, the No 1 heavyweight of his generation, is fighting a one-bout kick-boxer next month in the shadow of the pyramids.

Late on Saturday night, in a brief encounter that means very little, there was a fierce look in Joshua’s eyes when Wilder went past. There might just be hope yet for one of the biggest fights to ever slip away. Wilder against Joshua would still, a decade on, be an enormous attraction.