Tyson Fury Full Of Praise For Anthony Joshua
WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury has lauded rival Anthony Joshua for the way he handled his shock defeat to Andy Ruiz Jr. in June 2019.
Ruiz Jr. won the fight via TKO in the seventh round, ending Joshua’s undefeated record, and in doing so, became the new WBA (Super), IBF, WBO, and IBO heavyweight champion. Though a massive upset for him, ‘AJ’ responded positively to the loss, and just six months later, bounced back to beat the Mexican-American via unanimous decision in the rematch.
“He Handled It Like A Man”
Speaking to TalkSport (as transcribed by The Mac Life), Fury heaped praise on Joshua for handling the ‘loss like a man’.
“Very class. Listen, we are rivals and have been for a long time but I have to speak truthfully,” Fury said. “Joshua handled it like a man, handled it very sportsmanlike, he took it in his stride. He knew he’d make a mistake, and didn’t say why, he didn’t make excuses, I didn’t hear any excuses. He just said: ‘Well done, see you next time’. I hope that I would conduct myself like that, as well, if it happened to me. We’ve seen it so much over the years – [Deontay] Wilder’s excuses, David Haye’s excuses, everybody who loses a fight for whatever reason they always say: ‘I had a bad foot, a bad shoulder’.
“Either don’t take the fight and have it postponed or if you are going to take it, don’t mention it afterwards! Don’t take the glory from someone else’s victory. I take my hat off to AJ. That was class.”
Since losing his world title to Fury at the start of the year, Wilder has blamed his performance on the suit he walked to the ring in, and a bicep injury. He has also accused Tyson of loading his gloves, and suggested that his own trainer Mark Breland, spiked his water. And has even gone so far as to conspire that the referee was against him.
Fury vs Joshua
Joshua is set to defend his titles against Kubrat Pulev on December 12th. Fury was originally scheduled to defend his WBC in a trilogy fight with Deontay Wilder one week later, but the fight fell through. Instead, ‘The Gypsy King’ is now expected to fight Agit Kabayel in the new year. Should both Brits win their upcoming fights, they have agreed to fight later 2021.
“Providing we both come through our next fights I would like to think that me and Joshua will finally get made, both on top of our careers, both world heavyweight champions, twice next year hopefully.”
How do you see Tyson Fury vs Anthony Joshua going if they finally meet inside the ring in 2021?
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