HEAVYWEIGHT Deontay Wilder claims a unification bout between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua was “never going to happen”.
The British stars were tipped to face each other earlier this year before the Gypsy King was ordered to fight the Bronze Bomber for a third time.
Speaking to BT Sport, Wilder said: “The Fury-AJ talk, it was never going to happen. They never had a contract to begin with, that was all propaganda.
“There was nothing I was concerned about because I knew the truth, you know.
“Certain fans and people just take the first thing they hear without doing research and they just go away with it.
“People want to be first nowadays instead of being correct and that was the situation.
“One thing is for sure – when you put black ink to white paper, it’s sealed. It’s called a contract. And it’s hard to get out of that.
“As long as I knew I had that contract and we was going to activate it, there wasn’t no words or concerns about the the talk. It just hyped people up.”
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Fury, 33, and Joshua, 31, were expected to meet in Saudi Arabia for the undisputed heavyweight world title in August.
But the proposed fight was scuppered when a judge ordered the Gypsy King to face Wilder, 35, for a third time.
The two are now set to face each other in Las Vegas on Saturday night for the WBC belt, finally settling their long-running saga.
The collapse of his blockbuster meeting with Fury led to AJ fighting undefeated Oleksandr Usyk, 34, in September – with disastrous results.
The Brit suffered a points defeat to the Ukrainian and needs to win a rematch to keep his hopes of an undisputed clash with Fury alive.
But Wilder isn’t holding his breath and insists he wasn’t surprised Joshua suffered a second professional defeat.
The American added: “Malik [Scott, Wilder’s trainer] always talks about Usyk and how skilful he is and different things.
“Coming from a cruiserweight… he definitely had his struggles. We’ve seen that with Chazz Witherspoon, with Derek Chisora.
“But styles make fights and with Joshua, he just had his number at that moment in time.
“And I think he’s going to have his number even more so the second time around.
“Like [Usyk] said, he’s going to be faster and I think he’s going to be a little bit faster as well.
“But who knows? It’s boxing, at the end of the day. We really don’t know until it’s time for things to happen.”
Source: Boxing - thesun.co.uk
