Ricky Hatton has branded the heavyweight title picture “embarrassing” for boxing.
It comes after Tyson Fury’s revived attempts to agree a fight with Anthony Joshua fell flat, following unsuccessful talks over an undisputed clash with Oleksandr Usyk. ‘AJ’s’ promoter Eddie Hearn has since confirmed that Matchroom have sent an offer to Dillian Whyte, while WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman has stated his plans to order a mandatory challenger for Fury’s world title.
The latest blow to a potential fight between Fury and Joshua has led the retired world champion Hatton to question the state of the sport. As a former training partner of Fury, Hatton has been left bemused by boxing’s inability to book the biggest fights possible at heavyweight.
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“We’ve been wondering if this fight is going to happen for the last five or six years; there’s been a lot of talk and not much else. I think it will happen. I think it needs to happen,” Manchester boxing legend Hatton told Gambling Zone.
“It’s getting to the stage where all the noise around it, it’s getting a bit embarrassing. I’m not pointing the finger at Tyson or AJ, nor do I think why it hasn’t happened is down to Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn – nobody knows what the negotiations are like and who is in the right or who is in the wrong.
"We don’t know what the root of the problem is. It could be a number of things: the purse, the TV, location, we don’t know. A fight such as this, of this magnitude and size, would be the biggest fight in British boxing history and it’s not happening for some reason.”
An end-of-year extravaganza featuring Fury and Usyk, as well as Joshua and Deontay Wilder, has been tipped for Saudi Arabia, though these plans are yet to be confirmed. However, Hatton feels that the rise of influencer boxing shows why the sport needs to get its star names in the ring together.
“For the future of the sport, the big names need to start fighting each other,” Hatton continued. “You’ve got other fights getting a lot of attention: MMA fighters fighting boxers, YouTubers fighting each other, boxers fighting YouTubers. These are all huge events and, sadly, our sport is getting left behind a little bit because fights, like Tyson Fury vs Anthony Joshua are not happening.”
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