ANTHONY JOSHUA revealed he will target a super-fight with Tyson Fury after Deontay Wilder announced his rematch with Luis Ortiz.

Joshua, 29, defends his unified titles against Andy Ruiz Jr, also 29, on Saturday at New York’s legendary Madison Square Garden.

He defends his WBA, IBF and WBO crowns five miles away from the Barclays Center where Wilder took out Dominic Breazeale, 33, inside one round sending a message to the division.

Wilder, 33, then announced he will rematch Ortiz, 40, who he beat in 10 rounds last year, leaving AJ revealing to JOE that he will chase Fury in a bid to “challenge” himself.

Joshua said: “I want a sit down with Fury and see what it’ll take to make the fight.

“Because Wilder’s fighting Ortiz and as a fan of the sport, look, it would be easy to go fight Joe Bloggs, the next five times and try to sell out an arena, but I just feel like I’m robbing myself.

“So I want to challenge myself with the likes of Fury or Wilder.

“I’m going to sit down, I’m going to try and get a meeting with Fury now and see if I win Saturday what it will take to get this fight made.”

The trio of belts Joshua currently holds were all won by Fury in 2015 when he outpointed Wladimir Klitschko on a famous night in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Demons outside the ring caused Fury to relinquish his belts and take a two and a half year layoff before making his return last June.

AJ went on to better Fury’s win against Klitschko by stopping the ring legend in 11 rounds at Wembley Stadium in April 2017 in what was a modern classic.

LESSONS LEARNED

The unified champ revealed another “slugfest” would cause him to walk away from the sport – though the lessons he learned that night have allowed him to adjust his tactics accordingly.

Joshua added: “You know when it’s a slugfest, it wasn’t even a technical fight, where [Klitschko] just caught me with a – I don’t know – it was weird, it was just a slugfest.

“One of those ones where I had to go down in it, to get up, to fight back, but what I learned is that I was too too heavy as a heavyweight.

“I was doing a lot of weights, so I couldn’t carry my body properly.

“I learned how to pace myself throughout the rounds, also, lastly, I said to my coach, I said ‘Look, if I have another one of these fight, I’m done with boxing’.

Most Read in Boxing

“I said I should be good enough that I don’t have to go through hell and back to win a fight. It shouldn’t be like a good competition, I shouldn’t have to go through one of those fights to win.

“They’re the three things, don’t be too top heavy, stay loose and control myself throughout each round – don’t gas out.

“I need to improve because I can’t have too many of these fights if I want to win.”

3

Source: Read Full Article