Anthony Joshua vs. Tyson Fury shouldn’t need another lesson from boxing’s recent past, but the same warning signs are already showing up again.

Eddie Hearn told reporters, including World Boxing News, that Anthony Joshua could fight in July and then attack Tyson Fury in November, rather than going straight to the type of immediate fight that many fans would prefer.

On the surface, the idea is understandable. Joshua hasn’t had much time in the ring since he went just a few rounds with Jake Paul in December, and what followed behind the ropes was unimaginable personal heartbreak when he lost two close friends in a car crash in Nigeria.

The comeback against Fury is quite simple to understand.

What’s harder to justify is why boxing drifts toward the same unnecessary risks whenever a major event is waiting to happen.

Joshua can take absolutely zero risks. He learned this the strenuous way in his match against Daniel Dubois, when he was one step away from another world title fight, and this reality should come up in every conversation.

If the plan is to keep the pot tight with one more run before Fury, your opponent needs to be as close to a guaranteed win as matchmaking can get.

Everything else begins to resemble the kind of thinking that has already ruined one blockbuster and helped turn another into a cautionary tale.

Boxing keeps finding up-to-date ways to ruin the easiest fights.

The history of the warm-up

WBN has covered this issue from every angle because it keeps coming back. When it came to Garcia vs. Haney 2 and Wilder vs. Joshua in the warm-up limbo, it was quite elementary: ready-made, great fights do not require additional obstacles to be placed in front of them.

Sport continues to act as if waiting times need to be extended, when in fact all it is doing is opening the door to disaster.

The same warning applied when the Fury-Joshua idea came up again, and the plan was rightly described as the unfathomable Groundhog Day of Reckoning.

Boxing had already experienced the consequences of this plan once and still seemed willing to undo it as if he had learned nothing.

The Day of Reckoning strategy was to secure a fight between Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder after both men had separate fights on the same card. Instead, Wilder lost to Joseph Parker, Joshua defeated Otto Wallin, and the fight everyone had been waiting for for years disappeared in one evening.

It wasn’t bad luck. This was a direct result of warming up for a sedate fight that should have taken place immediately.

Even when Wilder’s subsequent plans carried similar Day of Reckoning risks, the same conclusion remained obvious. An earlier fight is only legitimate if it is truly strategic, tightly controlled and built around preserving the main event rather than gambling.

If Hearn and Joshua’s entourage think he really needs one more performance ahead of Fury, then fine. At least there’s a reason for it, given his confined activities and everything else he’s been up to since December.

But if that’s the case, it can’t be sold as routine. It must be true.

Joshua doesn’t need a test. He doesn’t need a risky name to get off the ground, and he certainly doesn’t need a fight with enough intrigue to fail.

He needs what Deontay Wilder could never provide himself when Turki Alalshikh’s crazy plan for the Joshua vs. Wilder in 2023 required both men to go through danger before earning the mega-bucks.

The Wilder side of the equation turned out to be against Parker and the whole thing went south.

Just do Fury

That’s why the alternative still seems the simplest and smartest of all: let Tyson Fury be the test.

Fury is now thirty-seven years elderly and did not look his best in his last match against Arslanbek Makhmudov. If Joshua wants the right challenge, one with the most reward and the least wasted movement, Fury is staring him in the face.

There is another obvious issue that should not be ignored. Whatever happens in the first Joshua-Fury fight, a rematch is all but guaranteed, meaning Joshua will remain vigorous either way.

This alone makes the case for a separate warm-up even thinner.

And herein lies the frustration of anyone who has watched boxing repeat this cycle over the years.

Fans aren’t asking you to build an impossible fight from scratch. They are asking for one of the easiest major events in sports to organize. Joshua vs. Fury has history, rivalry, commercial value, British relevance and global curiosity.

This is not a fight that needs to be wrapped in cotton wool. It doesn’t require marinating with more side roads and extra calculations.

You have to sign it.

If Joshua really needs a confidence builder, make him the safest one imaginable and move on. But if there is any appetite to turn this interim fight into something more threatening, boxing is once again creating exactly the kind of nightmare that has already cost the sport too much.

There can’t be another breakdown where a routine training session turns into a disaster, the plan falls apart in front of everyone, and the fans are once again dissatisfied for reasons that were obvious from the beginning.

Boxing has seen this story too many times. There’s no need to pretend that the ending is still a secret.