Tyson Fury's former sparring partner Christopher Lovejoy has backed Anthony Joshua to win if the pair can agree to fight this year.
The former world champion has today announced via his management team that he will accept Fury's terms for a fight on December 3. And Lovejoy, a heavyweight with a fascinating background in the sport who has shared the ring with some of the best in sparring and nobody of note in his 20-1 professional career, believes the Watford fighter will become a three-time champion.
Joshua is coming off two unified heavyweight title losses at the hands of Oleksandr Usyk, once in a mandatory defence and again in a rematch for the belts that he had lost. Now, he faces an unexpected immediate shot at the one belt he has never held; the WBC title which Fury has held for the past two-and-a-half years.
Lovejoy took to Twitter to give his prediction, claiming that he had knocked Fury out of the ring during their sparring session in a few years ago. "I'm not even a fan of AJ," Lovejoy said. "But I got him beating Fury, let's not forget Fury got dropped by Wilder. I also knocked Fury out the ring before."
Stories around Lovejoy's spar with Fury vary depending on who tells them, but given the one televised showing Lovejoy had when he faced Mahmoud Charr last year, the Brit's seems more plausible. Lovejoy claims that he comprehensively beat the lineal champion, while Fury says it went very much the other way.
“What happened was, there was this big fella, six-foot-five, 20 stone, 18-0 (18 KOs), he was highly rated by the WBA,” Fury told iFL TV in a 2019 interview. “And he was saying all over Las Vegas, all in the heavyweight gyms, ‘I’m going to knock Tyson Fury out. He’s a bum, he’s this, he’s that.’
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“So one of the trainers at the gym said, ‘Oh Tyson, there’s this guy who said he’s gonna knock you out.’ I said, ‘Are you going to knock me out, are you?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I am.’ I said, ‘Come down and do it then.’ So anyway I wasn’t [sparring] at the gym and he turned up to the gym. I said, ‘I’ll tell you what to do, come back tomorrow and I’m gonna knock you out. If I don’t, it don’t count.’
“He sort of flapped it, didn’t know how to take it. But he left and he came back tomorrow. My cousin said, ‘I want you to drop him with a straight left hand in the first round.’ I said, ‘You got it.’ He comes running at me, I just went slip, boom and down he went. All 20 stone of him on the floor.”
The 6'5" heavyweight tipped the scales at a massive 315lb for his last fight in Mexico, going 20-1 with his latest stoppage. He has only fought one legitimate opponent in Charr, and was handily taken care of in the second round.
