By Edward Chaykovsky
If the fight happened right now, former undisputed heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis would pick Tyson Fury to defeat Anthony Joshua.
A fight between Fury (25-0, 18KOs) and Joshua (17-0, 17KOs) is arguably the biggest fight to be make on British soil.
Fury stunned everyone last November, when he traveled to Germany and stunned Wladimir Klitschko with a twelve round decision win to capture the IBO/IBF/WBO/WBA heavyweight titles. Since that fight, a contracted Fury-Klitschko rematch has been postponed on two occasions and has a tentative date of October 29th.
Fury was stripped of his IBF title, not long after winning it, for being unable to make a mandatory defense against Czar Glazkov.
Glavkov was stopped in three rounds by Charles Martin, who picked up the vacant belt in January. Then in April, Joshua blew out Martin in two easy rounds to win the IBF crown. He retained the title in June with a seventh round stoppage of Dominic Breazeale.
While Lewis would pick Fury to win right now - he cautions that after a few more fights that outcome could easily swing in the other direction.
"Right now the number one is Tyson Fury because he beat the man that beat the man that beat the man," Lewis told the BBC. "But Anthony Joshua is growing, he's knocking out everyone they put in front of him and he's looking good.
"He's definitely got a shining light for the future. I had to go away to America where Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson were at but everybody is in [Joshua's] back yard. All he has to do is look around the corner. I would think Tyson Fury would win at the moment but Anthony Joshua is not far away from him.
"It is very close. Maybe Anthony Joshua needs a few more fights before making that step but he's definitely not that far away."