Fight fans have been eagerly awaiting the anticipated heavyweight fight between Anthony Joshua and Kubrat Pulev which had been scheduled to take place earlier this year but was delayed due to the coronavirus – because this is a mandatory challenger, it is still pretty much guaranteed that this will be the champs next fight, but there could be another challenger that comes afterwards.

The next mandatory challenger could come in the form of Robert Helenius, the finnish fighter – after a recent victory over Adam Kownacki, he may be one fight away from becoming Joshua’s next mandatory fight meaning we could see some of the top challengers in names of Ortiz or Ruis Jr, a tough challenge in itself before even reaching the champ himself.

This does bring up questions around the popular fights that many are looking for – the potential for a fight against Tyson Fury or Deontay Wilder have been around for as long as Joshua has been in contention to become champ, and now that he has been champ for a while it has seemed the logical fight to make. With Wilders recent loss to Fury, it may seem as if Fury would be at the top of the list for a fight to make, but with these mandatory challengers starting to line up it may be awhile before we see either of those fights.

The Joshua v Pulev fight still doesn’t have a confirmed date for when it can be expected, the original bout was set to take place on June 20^th with a backup on July 25^th, but with the backup date quickly approaching it’s beginning to look as if we’ll be waiting until much later in the year to see the fight, with the possibility that the fight may not even happen until the New Year. Further delays continue to open the door for other challengers to begin moving into position and further delaying any potential of a super fight that many fans are looking forward to – these delays mean it could be a while since we see a unified champion once again as lineal champ Fury still holds the WBC title after defeating Wilder in February – given that there seems to be a trilogy fight lined up between the two as well, we may be a long way out from that superfight.

There is some good news for punters though – with other sporting events coming back and it beginning to look like we could see some big boxing fights in the near future, is that betting is coming back in a big way. There had been some challenges to overcome, a recent ban to all credit card betting alongside a recent change to the gamstop initiative which has made it mandatory for all UK operators to register to, a number of sites are registering elsewhere to get around these changes, Max give a great non gamstop list of many of these betting sites so you’re able to get back into your favourite sports betting activity.