Lennox Lewis has urged Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury to settle their long-running rivalry before the opportunity slips away, warning Britain’s two heavyweight stars not to repeat the mistake that continues to haunt his own illustrious career.
Lewis remains the last undisputed heavyweight champion produced by Britain, a fighter who ultimately avenged his only two professional defeats and beat every opponent willing to share the ring with him.
Yet for all his accomplishments, the former champion admits there is one absence from his record that still lingers: a failure to face Riddick Bowe, the man he famously defeated to win Olympic gold in Seoul in 1988.
More than three decades on, Lewis believes that regret should serve as a lesson for Joshua, 36, and Fury, 37, whose long-anticipated all-British showdown has drifted in and out of view for years.
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Speaking in Miami, where he is attending AJ's controversial bout against Jake Paul, Lewis made his feelings clear.
“I would say to them, listen, just get the fight on,” Lewis told The Sun.
“The British public wants to see it, I want to see it and I think that’s the great next big fight out there.”
Lennox Lewis has urged Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury to settle their long-running rivalry before the opportunity slips away, warning Britain’s two heavyweight stars not to repeat the mistake that continues to haunt his own illustrious career
|PA
The warning carries weight because Lewis lived through the consequences of a super-fight that never materialised.
In 1992, Bowe infamously discarded the WBC belt in a bin rather than face Lewis as a mandatory challenger, a moment that became one of the most notorious episodes in heavyweight history. Lewis, all these years on, admits it remains a sore point.
“I think he made a big mistake not fighting me, putting the belt in the garbage. It showed he didn’t want the fight,” he said.
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“I’d always have that shadow over his head. If they (Joshua and Fury) don’t fight, it means that somebody doesn’t want to fight.”
Those words will resonate as Joshua prepares to step into the ring against Paul, the YouTuber-turned-boxer with a 12-1 professional record, in a bout that has divided opinion across the sport.
Lewis, now 60, is in Florida to watch the Netflix spectacle unfold, but he believes the wider implications for Joshua’s legacy are impossible to ignore.
According to Lewis, the Watford-born star risks leaving fans with uncomfortable questions if he were to walk away from boxing having fought Paul but never Fury, a contest that has long been framed as the defining fight of this heavyweight era.
“The British public wants to see that fight and I hear the fight’s been signed,” Lewis said.
Anthony Joshua needs to beat Jake Paul to stand any chance of a blockbuster showdown with Tyson Fury
| GETTY“So if this is a warm-up fight for the Tyson Fury fight, I don’t think it’s a good fight for him.
“It depends on how he feels about it. I do think that he would want to fight Fury.
"I think that’s the main fight on his head right now.
“The British public wants to see it and I think it will be a great fight for them.”