But the bout featuring former two-time heavyweight champions almost went up in flames over 24 hours in July — well before the dramatic negotiation process nearly derailed it again in recent weeks.  

On July 24, Fury (36-2-1, 25 KOs) handled his tune-up tilt in Thailand with a stoppage win against faded veteran Mariusz Wach. The following day, Joshua (30-4, 27 KOs) was nearly burned during his warm-up act in Saudi Arabia. After being dropped twice in the opening round by the unheralded Kristian Prenga, Joshua bounced back and blasted him in the second.

"The Prenga fight woke me up. It made me realize my motto that boxing is not a sport – boxing is a fight, never lose sight of that," Joshua said in an interview with The Ring's Mike Coppinger. 

"Strategy is cool, but let me tell you something. At that moment, you have to be ready for anything. And with what happened to me when I fought Prenga, it just switched me on to realize, if I can do what I do in round two in round one, I could have done it way earlier."

Joshua had serious cobwebs to shake off after surviving a fatal car accident in December, and Prenga capitalized. He dropped AJ with a brutal right uppercut within the first 20 seconds of the fight. Joshua fought back on wobbly legs only to be floored again near the end of the round. Joshua recovered, and then emphatically ended the slugfest in the second with a combination capped off by a right-handed missile.

It would seem unfathomable for Joshua to strike gold twice in similar fashion against Fury, who operates in a different stratosphere than Prenga and certainly wouldn't let Joshua off the hook if he caught him.  

"I went in there [against Prenga] thinking, you know, this is round one, let me break him down," Joshua said. "To be fair, I was watching a lot of Terence Crawford and Shakur Stevenson [heading into the fight], and I was really like, you got to practice your defense.

"But in heavyweight boxing, your best defense is your offense. I can't go in there thinking I'm going to break this fighter down over the course of the rounds. I'm going to take you out in round one if I can."

Manouk Akopyan is The Ring’s lead writer. Follow him on X and Instagram: @ManoukAkopyan.