Almost a year and a half after defeating Wladimir Klitschko, heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua returns to Wembley Stadium. There, WBA challenger Alexander Powetkin will be waiting for Joshua before the long-awaited fight against Deontay Wilder begins.
The fights are expected to take place on September 22 and April 13, as its promoter Eddie Hearn announced on Twitter. 28-year-old Joshua, who currently holds the belts of the WBA, WBO and IBF, would have preferred to fight WBC World Champion Wilder, according to Hearn. On the other hand, he did not want to jeopardize his WBA belt, which would have been threatened if the fight against Powetkin had been cancelled.
A fight between Joshua and Wilder could lead to a novelty: For the first time in the history of professional boxing, the winner of the fight would then wear all four belts of the major associations. Lennox Lewis also held four titles in 2000, but one of them was the IBO Belt, which is less important than the other organisations.
Intensive talks have been going on for months about a unification struggle between Wilder and Joshua, which, however, had recently failed. As a result, the WBA demanded the fight against the Russian Powetkin.