Hrgovic attacks title call for Joshua-Fury showdown

IBF heavyweight champion Filip Hrgovic has delivered a blunt verdict on the plan to put the WBA super heavyweight title on the line when Anthony Joshua faces Tyson Fury in Cardiff, arguing that the decision damages boxing and raises an awkward question about how either man earned a shot at a world championship. Speaking on The Stomping Ground podcast, Hrgovic added a champion's voice to a dividing debate.

Joshua and Fury, two former two-time world heavyweight champions, are finally scheduled to meet at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff on December 11, 2026. Under the plan promoted by Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren, the winner would become a three-time world heavyweight champion. That prize is what troubles Hrgovic, not the contest itself. He has not questioned whether Joshua against Fury is a major event. He has questioned whether it should also be a world-title fight.

"I do not know how they find a belt for that kind of fight," Hrgovic said. "Who did they fight in their last fights? I mean, they are both big superstars, but how are they fighting for a title? Where did that come from?" His point was deliberately simple: superstardom is not the same as qualification, and a belt should be earned through rankings and recent results rather than attached to the biggest available date.

Hrgovic went further, linking the decision to boxing's wider credibility problem. "These kinds of decisions are killing the sport," he said. "It is not good for the sport. Because of these funny decisions, people do not consider boxing a serious sport." It reflected a familiar complaint: too many titles and exceptions blur what a championship means.

The title status remains unconfirmed

There is an important qualification. The WBA has not officially confirmed the title status of the December 11 fight. Hearn and Warren have maintained that the super title will be at stake, and reporting around the announcement has described the belt as vacant and available to the winner. Until the body itself confirms it, the title element remains reported, not settled.

The distinction between the WBA's two heavyweight belts matters here. Murat Gassiev is expected to retain the WBA regular heavyweight title, which will not be contested in Cardiff. The belt said to be at stake is the organisation's super title, a separate and more prestigious version of the championship. For critics, that makes it harder to defend: one champion keeps his belt elsewhere while two others contest another version of it.

What Joshua and Fury did last

The recent form cited by Hrgovic is part of the public record. Joshua and Fury both fought in July 2026. Joshua defeated Kristian Prenga, while Fury stopped Mariusz Wach. Hrgovic's question was whether victories over those opponents constitute a route back to a world title. Neither result was presented as a world-title eliminator, and neither opponent was a reigning champion.

That context does not diminish what Joshua and Fury achieved across their careers. Joshua won Olympic gold before becoming a unified world champion, while Fury famously travelled to Germany in 2015 to dethrone Wladimir Klitschko and later became WBC champion. Their names carry weight precisely because of those achievements. Hrgovic's argument is narrower: past greatness should not automatically reopen the door to a championship, especially when other heavyweights are working through mandatory routes and eliminators.

Why Hrgovic's voice carries weight

Hrgovic is not speaking as an outsider. He is a reigning world champion, and he won his title the hard way. In August 2026, he stopped Moses Itauma in the ninth round at London's O2 Arena to claim the vacant IBF heavyweight title, becoming Croatia's first heavyweight world champion. Itauma had dominated much of the fight and dropped Hrgovic in the second round, but the younger man tired, and Hrgovic seized the closing rounds before Itauma's corner threw in the towel.

That victory gives Hrgovic a direct stake in the division's order. As IBF champion, he shares a picture split between Daniel Dubois at the WBO, Agit Kabayel at the WBC and Gassiev's WBA regular belt. A unification fight with the Joshua-Fury winner would be an obvious ambition, but Hrgovic has previously doubted whether either man would look his way.

A Cardiff twist on a familiar argument

None of this is likely to change the Cardiff main event. Joshua against Fury will still fill the Principality Stadium and be remembered as the night Britain's two great heavyweights finally met. The WBA's eventual confirmation will settle the formal question, but not the argument about what a title should mean.

Hrgovic has forced that argument into the open before the fight rather than after it. If the winner is crowned a three-time world champion, the celebration will be real, and so will the questions that follow: who did he beat to get there, and what did that belt represent? For now, Hrgovic has made his position clear. He wants the sport to protect its titles, even when the temptation is to attach one to its biggest fight. Cardiff will provide the spectacle. Whether it also provides a worthy world champion is, in his view, a question boxing still has to answer.