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The Telegraph

Tyson Fury v Anthony Joshua confirmed for Saudi Arabia, says Eddie Hearn

Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury will take their “fight of the century” to Saudi Arabia in August, promoter Eddie Hearn has confirmed. The controversial choice of location comes after weeks of contract wrangles – and has sparked immediate criticism from Amnesty International over the state’s human rights abuses. Within hours of Joshua telling Fury he is “tired of waiting” amid a tit-for-tat blame game for the delay, Hearn said a location and date had been set. “I think it’s a very bad secret that the fight’s happening in Saudi Arabia,” he told Sky Sports. Despite the fiancee of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi pleading in Telegraph Sport for the pair to turn down the “shameful” deal, Hearn said both men were happy to trust the Saudis. The nation, which is thought to have tabled an offer exceeding £100million for the first bout, had “delivered on every one of their promises” for Joshua’s fight against Andy Ruiz in 2019, he insisted. “From our perspective and AJ’s perspective, we’re ready to go,” Hearn said. “From Tyson Fury’s perspective, they’ve got a couple of lawyers across it.” August 14, which is a week after the Olympics, appears to be the most likely date, although Hearn initially told Sky that August 7 was also possible. “That’s going to be the date,” he later added of August 14. “Of course you’ve got the Olympics finishing on August 7th, so in terms of a global spectacle, it would make sense to go on the 14th. That’s one of the things to tick off in the next, hopefully, few days.” However, sources close to Fury suggest the date has yet to be settled. Joshua’s camp has been pushing hard for August 14 because Rob McCracken, the main man in his corner, will be in Tokyo the week before as performance director for the British Olympic boxing team. Fury’s preference remains to hold the fight earlier in the month, while the Games are still on. There have been Zoom meetings between all parties and communication between lawyers since Bob Arum, Fury’s US-based promoter, said the fight was almost “dead in the water”. Hearn hailed the “fantastic” organisers in the Middle East. “I think it’s a very bad secret that the fight’s happening in Saudi Arabia. I don’t mind giving you that information, Bob Arum’s already done it,” he added. “It’s the same people we did the deal with for Andy Ruiz – that event was spectacular. As partners they were fantastic as well, so we’re very comfortable.” Dates were announced just as it looked like the deal was at risk of falling apart. Dealmakers were expected to miss their latest deadline last weekend despite Telegraph Sport disclosing last week that August 14 was close to being finalised. Aram cited that the contract with the Saudi Arabian group would “take weeks to complete”, while Joshua’s promoter Hearn was adamant a fortnight ago that all parties were on the same page and working hard to “get the final contract over the line”. The fierce rivals had been expected since March to meet in July or August, and Chris Evans MP, chairman of the APPG, had said the UK should be moving “heaven and earth” to try to get dates agreed for Wembley. Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of murdered journalist Khashoggi, also told Telegraph Sport that accepting a potential £100million-plus offer would present the crown prince, accused over his alleged role in her partner’s killing, with a “reward for his crimes”. Arum had told Telegraph Sport that unless the deal was completed earlier this month, Fury would most likely move on to another opponent this summer. However, Fury sat down with Hearn in Arlington, Texas, last week, where the promoter asserted that Joshua and Fury were intending to conclude the deal, and that fans would see WBC champion Fury take on Joshua, who holds the IBF, WBO and WBA titles, in three months’ time. Two fights for the undisputed championship had been agreed upon to take place this year. Hearn said on Tuesday that “there’s no reason” why a formal announcement should not “happen this week”. “This is kind of like the moment where you could actually turn around at this point and say, ‘This is dragging on too long, or I can’t be dealing with this anymore,'” he added. “But we have to nail this, and I’m not going to stop until I nail it, and everyone has just got to move forward collectively. “We’re ready to go from our side. We’re not far away from their side and it is inevitable, but at the same time, we’ve got to close the door on it.” Fury has yet to respond. Responding to the announcement on Tuesday, Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, immediately urged Joshua and Fury to at least condemn the nation’s “atrocious human rights record”. She told Telegraph Sport that Saudi Arabia is “yet again trying to shift the media spotlight away” from its jailing of activists including Loujain al-Hathloul, the murder of Khashoggi and “its indiscriminate bombing of civilians in neighbouring Yemen”. “Simply put Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman wants people around the world to be talking about sport in Saudi Arabia, not the dissidents being locked up after sham trials or the people being tortured in Saudi jails,” Allen added. “When he fought in Saudi Arabia in 2019 it was disappointing that Anthony Joshua ducked the issue of human rights, and this time we hope he and his opponent can speak out in the build-up to the fight. A few well-chosen words about human rights from Joshua and Fury would mean a lot to Saudi Arabia’s beleaguered human rights defenders, helping to counteract the intended sports-washing effect of this boxing match.” Analysis: What does Saudi Arabia really want from sport? Success in bringing the Joshua-Fury fight to Saudi is among the most audacious raid for a sporting event by Riyadh backers. Academics insist there is method behind the madness of Saudi’s sudden sporting obsession. “This is bread and circus to fill the civil societal space,” says Dr Andreas Krieg, of King’s College London and the Royal College of Defence Studies. Audacious sporting bids are domestic appeasement in a nation where political debate is potentially deadly. “The public sphere is entirely consumed by entertainment and sports because you’re not allowed to speak about societal or political issues.” With jail and floggings among reported punishments for dissidents of Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the social media void is filled by the country’s rulers drip feed sporting and entertainment gossip. Hype around Saudi hosting Formula 1 this year as well as a previous Anthony Joshua fight in Riyadh dominated national dialogue for weeks, with Saudi Arabians now accounting for the eighth biggest population of Twitter users globally. Observers say life in the country is more authoritarian than ever since MBS came to power. The murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi has been disastrous for MBS’ efforts to earn new Western allies, but domestically the case is just one of countless claims of human rights atrocities. “The very strict enforcement of Sharia law simply goes beyond what Islam intended,” the academic adds. “It’s quite literally chopping people’s hands and heads off, and capital punishment is being used routinely against minors.” Pressure on MBS following Joe Biden’s election to the White House has led to prisoners of conscience being freed in recent weeks, but Krieg says there can be no moral justification for bringing a major fight to a nation where citizens have been imprisoned just for campaigning on women’s driving rights. “These people were imprisoned because there can be zero toleration of any form of opposition, any form of critical voices, whether online or offline,” he adds. “When you think about Saudi we always thought about a more repressive, authoritarian country, but it was never as bad as it is under MBS, because at least there was some sort of discourse going on – now it is absolutely zero tolerance.” Aside from helping fill the vacuum in public debate, bringing big sport to Saudi also helps MBS attempt to convince the world he is a global player. Saudi’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), is among the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world due to the oil boom of the previous century, with total estimated assets of almost £300 billion. It has become a so-called “piggy bank” for MBS, who is reported to have extracted funds directly from it to add to the total pot for Joshua’s previous fight in Riyadh against Andy Ruiz Jr. What else is motivating the Saudi sporting takeover? Much of MBS’ competitiveness is drawn from a ‘Keeping up with the Jones’s’ eye on progress on his contemporaries in Qatar and UAE. One has the World Cup, the other owns Manchester City. MBS’ trump card in return is his extraordinary ambition to build an equivalent of Dubai from scratch – the 10,230 square mile Neom development that could cost £400bn. The shiny marketing materials suggest the city could one day become a major international sporting hub, perhaps one day staging an international sporting competition, but observers, again, are sceptical. Dr Krieg says progress at the site currently amounts to an airport and little else as questions mount over the stability of Saudi’s long term financial outlook with oil prices unstable. “Nobody has any real numbers on unemployment but they are at more than 25 per cent among 18 year olds to 35 year olds,” he says. Bill Law, a Middle East analyst and editor of Arab Digest, says much of MBS’ Vision 2030 – a dramatic remaking of the Saudi economy and Saudi society – will be dependent on sport as “a big part of that agenda”. The ambition promises to encourage women into sport, creating 40,000 new jobs, but has effectively justified authorities in using the PIF to pursue Newcastle, F1, and now potentially tabling a £100million-plus offer for the Fury-Joshua fight. “MBS will take anything he can get his hands on because it gives him a much better image and it feeds into his narrative that Saudi Arabia is open and changing, becoming moderate,” Law says. “He’s been very successful in engaging sports. Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Major League Baseball have an exhibition series too. It’s all too irresistible for these big sporting bodies.” The Joshua-Fury fight or indeed attempts to bankroll the controversial golfing breakaway will do little to benefit soaring numbers of unemployed, Law explains. “As much as these sporting events are popular with young Saudis, most of them quite frankly can’t afford to go to them because they don’t have jobs,” he said. “He needs to deliver over a million jobs, and he’s showing no signs of doing that. Young Saudis can’t get married because they can’t afford to get on the housing ladder. So while he’s bringing in all of these splashy big sporting events, and spending hugely on Neom, the basics are not getting done. And I think the longer that goes on, and the more the oil revenues contract, the more difficult it’s going to be for him. That’s where again sports-washing is useful.” A version of this analysis first appeared on May 6