Eddie

Manager Eddie Howe says it was a “relief” that forward William Osula did not leave Newcastle United on transfer deadline day because he now looks like the “complete package”.

The 22-year-old was close to joining Eintracht Frankfurt last month, only for the move to fall through.

Osula has since gone on to make an impact for Newcastle in the Premier League, Carabao Cup and Champions League, and played a key role in Bruno Guimaraes’ 90th-minute winner against Fulham on Saturday.

Although record signing Nick Woltemade remains first-choice striker, Osula’s contributions have been welcomed by Howe after Yoane Wissa suffered a knee injury while on international duty with DR Congo.

“The next step was for Will to try and play regularly, so that was the aim [with the Frankfurt move], especially with us bringing two strikers in,” Howe said.

“As a younger coach, I really admired the teams he built at Chelsea, in particular.

“He is definitely a visionary – someone that broke the mould in terms of how you manage in different ways to do things, and then following his success through different clubs, leagues. Incredible, really, what he’s achieved in his career.

“It’s always a great opportunity for any club to go up against one of his teams. I’m looking forward to the challenge immensely and I think it’s going to be a great game.”

Mourinho considers himself “a little Magpie” on account of his bond with former Newcastle manager Sir Bobby Robson.

The Portuguese shadowed Sir Bobby at Sporting Lisbon, Porto and Barcelona as an interpreter and assistant in the 1990s.

Mourinho has spoken glowingly about Newcastle over the years and said he “loved” the club before this game.

“I have heard Jose’s words about Newcastle and I absolutely echo them myself,” Howe said.

“They are great words about Sir Bobby and the role he played in his career. That’s really nice to hear, but the line stops tomorrow.

“When the game kicks off, we want to win. We are desperate for the points. It will be a competitive game between two great clubs.”

Newcastle lost 2-1 to Brighton in the Premier League on Saturday and will run a late check on influential midfielder Sandro Tonali, who is suffering from illness.

“We will give him every opportunity,” Howe said. “He wasn’t there at training today and he’s such an important player, so we will use all the hours we have.”

Many actors talk about process but Ethan Hawke has made the act of creation central to his work. He’s played musicians and writers and when he’s gone behind the camera, he’s focused on the stories of composers, novelists, movie stars and country singers both famous and forgotten. Sometimes, it feels like he’s the unofficial patron saint of art suffering, fixated on the glory and anguish of putting yourself out there in the world.

So Hawke’s portrayal of Lorenz Hart, the brilliant but troubled lyricist responsible for beloved tunes like “My Funny Valentine,” in a story set shortly before his death would seem to be just the latest chapter of a lifelong obsession. But “Blue Moon,” Hawke’s ninth collaboration with director Richard Linklater, cuts deeper than any of his previous explorations. Imagining Hart on the night of his former collaborator Richard Rodgers’ greatest triumph — the launch of “Oklahoma!” — Linklater offers a wistful look at a songwriter past his prime. But the film wouldn’t resonate as powerfully without Hawke’s nakedly vulnerable portrayal.

It is March 31, 1943, eight months before Hart’s death at age 48 from pneumonia, and Hart has just gruffly left the Broadway premiere of “Oklahoma!” Arriving early at Sardi’s for the after-party, he plants himself at the bar, complaining to bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) that the show will be a massive success — and that it’s garbage. Eddie nods in a way that suggests he’s often lent a sympathetic ear to Hart’s rantings, allowing him to unload about the show’s supposedly banal lyrics and corn-pone premise and, worst of all, the fact that Rodgers will have his biggest smash the moment he stops working with Hart after nearly 25 years. “This is not jealousy speaking,” Hart insists, fooling no one.

As played by Hawke, Hart adores holding court, entertaining his captive audience with witty put-downs and gossipy Broadway anecdotes. Begging Eddie not to serve him because of his drinking problem, which contributed to the dissolution of his partnership with Rodgers, this impudent carouser would be too much to stand if he also wasn’t such fun company. But eventually, Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and his new lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney) are going to walk through that door and Hart will have to swallow his pride and pretend to be happy for them. From one perspective, “Blue Moon” is about the beginning of “Oklahoma!” as a pillar of American theater. From another, it’s Hart’s funeral.

Set almost exclusively inside Sardi’s, “Blue Moon” has the intimacy of a one-man stage show. After Hart vents about “Oklahoma!,” he readies himself for the arrival of Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley), a gorgeous Yale undergrad he considers his protégée. (He also claims to be in love with her, which baffles Eddie, who rightly assumed otherwise.) If the universal acclaim of “Oklahoma!” will force Hart to confront his professional irrelevance, maybe Elizabeth’s beaming presence — and the promise of them consummating their feelings — will be sufficient compensation.

Linklater, the man behind “School of Rock” and “Me and Orson Welles,” has made several films about creativity. (In a few weeks, he’ll debut another movie, “Nouvelle Vague,” which focuses on the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s epochal “Breathless.”) But what distinguishes “Blue Moon” is that, for once, it’s about someone else’s achievement — not the main character. Fearing he’s a has-been, the diminutive, balding Hart slowly succumbs to self-loathing. He can still spitefully quote the negative reviews for his 1940 musical “Pal Joey.” And he nurses a paranoid pet theory that Rodgers decided to collaborate with Hammerstein because he’s so much taller than Hart. (“Blue Moon” incorporates old-fashioned camera tricks to help Hawke resemble Hart’s under-five-feet frame.) Linklater’s movies have frequently featured affable underdogs, but by contrast, “Blue Moon” is an elegy to a bitter, insecure man whose view of himself as a failure has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Of the many artists Hawke has honored on screen, he has never depicted one so touchingly diminished — someone so consumed with envy who nonetheless cannot lie to himself about the beauty of the art around him. Turning 55 next month, Hawke shares with Hart an effusive passion for indelible work but also, perhaps, a nagging anxiety about the end of his creative usefulness. If he were younger, Hawke would have come across as self-regarding. Here, there’s only a poignantly egoless transparency, exposing the lyricist’s personal flaws — his drunkenness, his arrogance — while capturing the fragile soulfulness that made those Rodgers and Hart tunes sing.

Apropos of his relaxed approach, Linklater shoots “Blue Moon” with a minimum of fuss, but one can feel its enveloping melancholy, especially once the next generation of artists poke their head into the narrative. (Sondheim diehards will instantly identify the brash young composer identified only as “Stevie.”) But neither Linklater nor Hawke is sentimental about that changing of the guard.

That’s why Hawke breaks your heart. All of us are here for just a short time: We make our mark and then the ocean comes and washes it away. In an often remarkable career, Hawke has never embraced that truth so completely as he does here. Ultimately, maybe the work artists leave behind isn’t their most important contribution — maybe it’s the love they had for artistry itself, a passion that will inspire after they’re gone. That’s true of Lorenz Hart, and it will hopefully prove true of Hawke and this understated but profound film for years to come.

The tone was set long before kick-off.

Howe has rotated his team while fighting on multiple fronts in the opening weeks of the season.

But it was rather telling that the Newcastle head coach only made two changes for this game – and one was enforced after Tino Livramento suffered a knee injury.

The Premier League’s joint-lowest goalscorers needed to catch fire.

“There has been a lack of good football in general,” Gordon told TNT Sports. “We have defended really well, been organised, but have lacked that spark and creativity. We really wanted to put emphasis on getting that back tonight.”

There was certainly no chance of Newcastle underestimating Union as the visitors looked to bounce back from the weekend’s painful defeat against Arsenal.

The Belgian champions may be newcomers in this competition, but they beat PSV in their first ever Champions League game last month and had not lost any of their opening nine top-flight fixtures.

Such has been Union’s progress in European competitions in recent years, they actually have a significantly higher coefficient than Newcastle.

It was hardly a surprise, then, that the visitors left no stone unturned before facing a side who had an extra day to recover and prepare.

As well as personally reviewing his opponent, as always, Howe familiarised his side with their new surroundings by training at Lotto Park on the eve of the game.

That did not go unnoticed by Union manager Sebastien Pocognoli.

“Maybe the opponent sometimes can be condescending, to look down on you,” he said. “They didn’t. They paid us full respect. They played a big match with their skills and qualities.

“They played top level, all the Newcastle players played top level, so it shows that they had great respect for us.”

EDDIE Hearn and his wife are allegedly living separate lives with the boxing promoter moving “abroad” and recently being spotted without his wedding ring.

Viewers were also quick to point out the boxing promoter’s wife’s absence from his recent tell-all Netflix documentary.

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Although the couple remain married, their relationship has grown increasingly distant, reports Mail Online.

Eddie, 46, now spends most of his time in his luxurious Monaco home, while former beautician, Chloe, resides at the Hearn family’s estate in Ingatestone, Essex.

While Eddie resides in sunny Monaco for six months of the year, reportedly due to tax reasons, his wife occupies a smaller property away from the main house on the grand estate.

It is believed that the pair’s two teenage children travel between the two residences, regularly paying visits to their father.

However, beyond living in separate countries, the chairman of Matchroom sport also appears to not be wearing his ring in his new Netflix tell-all documentary.

The new show has captivated audience as it follows the famous father-son duo in their bid to take their heavyweight sports promotion company to the next level.

Yet, viewers were quick to spot both the absence of his wife of 13 years and a wedding band on his finger.

Eddie, who represents stars including Anthony Joshua and Canelo Alvarez, doesn’t appear to wear the band in the show or in the publicity photos taken ahead of its release.

Due to not being seen in public for months, whether or not Chloe is wearing her ring remains unknown.

The sports promoter’s wife has only been spotted once this year on March 31 when she resigned as a director from Matchroom’s charity foundation.

The following day, Eddie filed papers with Companies House confirming his relocation to Monaco.

However, despite this, friends of the pair reportedly remain adamant that the marriage remains robust and they are still very much together.

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A spokesperson for the couple said: “Rumours around the status of Eddie and Chloe’s marriage are untrue. They are still very much together.”

A source close to the family confirmed this, adding: “Eddie and Chloe may spend a lot of time apart but that’s down to the differing demands on them for business and family reasons – and they remain very much together.”

Another friend echoed these statements, explaining that the couple do lead increasingly separate lives, however, they remain strong as a couple and have no plans to change that.

The friend said that they are very different people with very different demands, as he fronts a huge business, while she is the primary carer to their girls.

Another source close to the Hearn’s also said that Eddie and Chloe are made for each other, adding that they have a modern relationship.

Prior to choosing to live in separate homes, the couple has always remained confident about their differences.

In a 2015 joint interview at Chloe’s Brentwood beauty salon, she described being married to Eddie as meaning in practice, learning to do everything on your own.

Eddie then chimed in, describing her as a boxing widow.

Eddie also recently shared a post to Instagram of him being welcomed to Kamani Living, a luxury real estate company based in Dubai.

This could suggest that the promoter is looking to make more investments in the Middle East.

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Joelinton says it was troubling to see Newcastle United team-mate Lewis Miley “get stick” after a landmark moment, but the Brazilian believes genuine supporters are firmly behind the teenager.

Miley chose to limit replies to a post he made on X to mark his 50th first-team game for Newcastle at the weekend. It is understood this was a precaution as he is still young.

The 19-year-old put in an accomplished display in the goalless draw against Bournemouth – his first Premier League start since February – but he still came in for criticism from a small minority of social media users who questioned his first-team credentials.

Miley’s course of action on the social media platform was noticed, and fans have since sent messages of support, while captain Bruno Guimaraes hailed his fellow midfielder as a “top player and guy”.

Joelinton played alongside academy graduate Miley in Newcastle’s 4-1 win against Bradford City on Wednesday night and said the youngster has a “great future in front of him”.

“It’s always difficult when you see your team-mate get stick,” Joelinton said following the Carabao Cup third-round tie. “I have had a difficult time here, too. I know how it is.

“I know the fans are behind the team and a really good young player. He played really well on Sunday. The team has to get better and everyone has to look on the mirror and get better.”

Miley praised Newcastle’s “amazing” travelling support in his post on Sunday, saying he was “very proud” to have hit the milestone for his boyhood club.

The midfielder broke a number of records during a breakout campaign at Newcastle a couple of years ago, including becoming the youngest player in Champions League history to provide an assist for an English side by doing so at the age of 17 years and 226 days.

Miley went on to suffer back and foot injuries and has faced intense competition for a starting berth while competing with fellow midfielders Guimaraes, Joelinton and Sandro Tonali.

But Miley, tellingly, kept his place in Eddie Howe’s starting line-up for the visit of Bradford.

“I thought Lewie was excellent,” the Newcastle head coach said. “In part, I think he really helped us in the first half. He played some lovely little deft touches and short passes into midfield using Joe and Bruno as a springboard, really, to control that midfield area.

“He’s come back into the team and produced two really good performances back-to-back. I thought he was really good against Bournemouth in maybe a slightly different way to tonight, but he’s developing his experience all the time and I’m really pleased with him.”

EDDIE Hearn has praised his rarely-seen sister as the “secret star” of his dad’s billion pound sports empire.

But despite Katie’s key role at Matchroom, she won’t be seen by Netflix viewers on the family’s new docuseries, Matchroom: The Greatest Showmen.

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Explaining why to The Sun, Eddie said: “My sister has no interest in the limelight.

“We are chalk and cheese in so many ways.

“She was an A-star student, I really wasn’t and when we did the deal with Netflix they were like, ‘oh and we’ll see your sister as well?’

“But she’s in the office all the time, hiding every time the cameras come in.

“I definitely took the extrovert side out of us.”

Eddie still backs himself as dad Barry’s favourite as he prepares to take over the business.

But Katie is a key player behind the scenes – with 40 years of experience in producing and globally distributing live sporting events.

Since becoming the first female to work on the Premiership and International production team at Sky Sports, Katie is now Director of Programming and CEO of Matchroom Media.

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Eddie added: “Katie’s a massive part of the business. She runs all the TV production and she’s a little bit of a kind secret star.

“She’s very talented, but she wouldn’t tell you how talented she is. I’m not very talented, but I’ll tell you how talented I am.”

Eddie also opened up about the decision not to include his wife and kids in the TV series that shot straight to the top of Netflix’s charts.

“It was mainly for the children,” he says.

“They already get a load of stick really through being my daughters. I’ve got two daughters and I want them to be able to live as normal a life as possible without someone having a preconceived perception of who they are or what they might be.

“It’s not like they’re hidden away, but I’ve seen some other documentaries where the kids are there and I just feel like it’s a huge amount of pressure, especially at that age, 13 and 15.”

It hasn’t stopped his kids from giving their opinions about his performance on the show.

Eddie laughed: “My eldest is watching the series and her first comment was ‘yeah, it’s good, but you lose a lot in it’.

“But that’s the real part of it. In an ideal world, AJ would have beat Dubois. We would have won the 5v5, but that wouldn’t be a great show.

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“I think it’s good for them to understand as well that it’s not just you go to work, you win, you make money, you go to work, you lose, you have bad days. You have a lot of pressure.”

Asked whether they’re likely to join the family business once he takes the top spot, Eddie added: “I’ve always said no to the thought of my daughters joining the business but as they get a little bit older, I think if they have a passion for it then why not.

“When I left school, I didn’t want to work for my dad. Everyone said to me growing up, ‘well, you’re just going to work for your dad anyway’.

“I thought no, I’m going to go out and I’m going to do my own thing and I did for probably four or five years, but then realised I’m putting all this energy and time into someone else’s company instead of putting that into what my dad built.

“Suddenly it felt like my role and responsibility was to carry on what was important to him.

“So, yeah, if they have a passion for it, then I wouldn’t stop them. But maybe not boxing. I’ll probably keep them away from boxing…”

Mark Volman, the singer who co-founded the buoyant 1960s hitmakers the Turtles and was half of the humorous harmony duo Flo & Eddie, has died. He was 78.

Representatives for Volman confirmed the death to Rolling Stone, citing a “brief, unexpected illness.” In 2020, Volman was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia, but continued touring and only announced his diagnosis in 2023.

When promoting his memoir “Happy Forever: My Musical Adventures with the Turtles, Frank Zappa, T. Rex, Flo & Eddie, and More” in 2023, Volman went public with his 2020 diagnosis of Lewy body dementia, a disease that results in a decline in cognitive ability, affecting reasoning, memory and movement.

In a People magazine story, Volman accepted his fate: “I got hit by the knowledge that this was going to create a whole new part of my life. And I said, ‘OK, whatever’s going to happen will happen, but I’ll go as far as I can.’”

Volman’s partner in both the Turtles and Flo & Eddie was Howard Kaylan, a high-school friend who turned into a lifelong creative partner. Sharing a taste for sweet melodies, cultural fads and unrepentant silliness, Volman and Kaylan adeptly navigated the cultural changes of the 1960s, steering the Turtles from surf-rock survivors to psychedelic freaks over the course of a decade.

The group’s sweet spot arrived in the second half of the 1960s, when they polished their Southern Californian folk-rock with studio savvy, creating hits — “Happy Together,” “She’d Rather Be With Me,” “Elenore” and “You Showed Me” — that appealed to mainstream listeners — they were the favorite band of Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia, even playing the White House in 1970 — while winking at hipper audiences.

As they drifted away from the middle of the road, the Turtles could occasionally give the sense that they were too smart for the room; one of their best albums, 1968’s “The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands,” was constructed as a concept album where the group adopted a different guise and musical style for each track.

The Turtles in 1967, clockwise from top left: Al Nichol, Jim Tucker, Mark Volman, Howard Kaylan, Johnny Barbara and Jim Pon.

(Central Press / Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

Volman and Kaylan capitalized on this quirk when they rechristened themselves as Flo & Eddie, a moniker they devised after a bitter legal battle with their former record label left them without the right to perform either as the Turtles or using their own names. During this period, Frank Zappa invited Flo & Eddie to join his Mothers of Invention, giving the duo a boost that led to an enduring career.

Flo & Eddie specialized in providing harmonic support to high profile acts: they toured with Alice Cooper, sang on T. Rex’s landmark glam album “Electric Warrior” and were recruited to sing on Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” when the Boss was looking for Beach Boys-like harmonies. On their own, Volman and Kaylan also honed their comedic shtick as recording artists, later taking their act to radio and, once they reacquired the rights to the Turtles moniker, on the road, playing the oldies circuit into the 2010s.

Unlike many other oldies acts, Volman and Kaylan possessed sharp business skills, acquired after their messy fallout with their record label, White Whale. Once they regained their master tapes, they licensed their catalog to reissue labels and kept a vigilant eye on how their recordings were disseminated in the marketplace.

On realizing that the Turtles’ “You Showed Me” provided a pivotal sample on De La Soul‘s 1989 debut album, “3 Feet High and Rising,” the duo sued the rap pioneers for $2.5 million in exemplary and punitive damages. The matter was settled out of court in favor of Volman and Kaylan; while the terms were not publicly disclosed, they reportedly were awarded $1.7 million in damages. The lawsuit and its fallout effectively ended the golden age of sampling in hip-hop.

Mark Volman during the 10th anniversary of the Happy Together tour at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in 2019.

(Scott Dudelson / Getty Images)

Born in Los Angeles on April 19, 1947, Volman grew up in a musical household in the neighborhood of Westchester. Even when he was young, relatives were struck by his exuberant personality. His aunt Ann Becker recalled in “Happy Forever”: “I can remember my mother shaking her head and saying, ‘That boy is so smart — he shouldn’t be so silly.’”

By the time he enrolled at Westchester High — his classmates included comedian Phil Hartman and Manson Family member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme — Volman had gravitated toward irreverence.

Meeting New York transplant Kaylan in choir, Volman soon became part of the Crossfires, playing saxophone alongside his new friend in the surf-rock combo. The Crossfires had two singles to their name before they signed to the fledgling White Whale Records in 1965. Already in the process of abandoning surf for folk-rock — Volman and Kaylan swapped their saxes for lead vocals — the group’s members accepted their new label’s suggestion to rename themselves; they rejected the stylized spelling of the Tyrtles in favor of the Turtles.

Taking a cue from the Byrds’ hit version of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” the Turtles released a revved-up cover of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” that squarely hit the zeitgeist, climbing into the Billboard Top 10 in summer 1965. Volman later remembered, “I graduated from high school in February 1965 and was on tour in June with a Top 10 record and on the Dick Clark Show.”

A couple of spirited sequels, “Let Me Be” and “You Baby,” kept the band in the Top 40 into 1966 but the Turtles’ hot streak quickly cooled, as a series of singles — including “Outside Chance,” written by White Whale staffer Warren Zevon — barely scraped the charts. “Happy Together,” a song rejected by a number of pop groups, revived the group’s fortunes, thanks in part to a sterling arrangement masterminded by new bassist Chip Douglas.

“Happy Together” topped the charts and would become one of the standards of its era, appearing often in commercials and films. In 1967, it propelled the Turtles back to the upper reaches of the charts, a place they’d stay through 1969, as they accumulated such hits as “She’d Rather Be With Me” and “Elenore.”

By far the biggest act on the small-scale White Whale, the Turtles were subjected to pressure by the label to record more commercial material, yet Volman and Kaylan kept pushing the band to make hip music. When the label suggested firing the rest of the Turtles, the singers arranged for the remaining three members to share songwriting credits on “The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands,” the first album they released after the success of “Happy Together.” On their final album, “Turtle Soup,” the Turtles hired Ray Davies as their producer; it was his first production outside his main band, the Kinks.

Tensions between the Turtles and White Whale escalated in 1970, leading the group to disband. In turn, the label exercised a clause in the band‘s recording contract that prevented the members from performing either “individually or collectively,” effectively barring Volman and Kaylan from continuing to work either as a group or as themselves. The pair decided to call themselves the Phlorescent Leech & Eddie, a name that would swiftly be shortened to Flo & Eddie; Volman was the former, Kaylan the latter.

Zappa brought the duo into his Mothers of Invention ensemble not long after the implosion of the Turtles. They stayed with him through an eventful year that included a concert in Montreux, Switzerland, that ended with the venue engulfed in fire; Deep Purple memorialized the event in “Smoke on the Water.”

Alice Cooper, second from left, with Mark Volman (drinking beverage) and bandmates in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1972.

(Jorgen Angel / Redferns / Getty Images)

Beginning with 1972’s “The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie,” Flo & Eddie released a series of increasingly facetious albums throughout the 1970s, but they had greater success singing harmonies for T. Rex and Cooper. “Hungry Heart,” Springsteen’s first Top 10 hit, served as a curtain call for this period of Flo & Eddie’s career. Soon, the duo put their days as recording artists to rest. While they still would contribute original music to animated television shows, including specials focusing on “Strawberry Shortcake” and “The Care Bears” series, the duo stopped writing and recording new Flo & Eddie music.

The move coincided with the duo finally winning back the rights to their names. Volman and Kalyan began this process in 1974, when they acquired the Turtles’ master recordings when White Whale assets were up for auction.

A decade later, they were able to tour as The Turtles … featuring Flo & Eddie, a billing they’d retain into the 2010s, until Kaylan retired from the road in 2018. With Ron Dante filling in for Kaylan, Volman continued performing as the Turtles as part of their regular Happy Together package tours.

Although Flo & Eddie embraced their status on the oldies circuit, they hadn’t faded entirely from modern music. When De La Soul sampled “You Showed Me” for their track “Transmitting Live From Mars” in 1989, the trio failed to clear the rights prior to release, so Volman and Kaylan sued the group, winning a large settlement that established a precedent for sample clearance in hip-hop.

The duo launched another major lawsuit in 2013 when they filed suit against Sirius XM for failing to pay sound recording royalties in California, New York and Florida. A California judge ruled in the duo’s favor in 2014, while a Florida judge ruled for Sirius XM in 2015. Although a settlement was reached in 2016, Sirius XM would win subsequent legal appeals in Florida and California.

Volman went back to school in 1992, pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. After earning a master’s degree in screenwriting in 1999 at Loyola Marymount, Volman soon moved into teaching, eventually becoming an associate professor at the Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.

Volman is survived by his daughters, Sarina Marie and Hallie Rae, both from his marriage to Patricia Lee.

ANTHONY JOSHUA looks ready to fight right now as he showed off his shadow boxing and hulking physique.

The two-time heavyweight world champion has been out since September 2024 when he was knocked out by Daniel Dubois.

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But he posted a video online – showing off his incredible shape – shadow boxing outside.

Elbow surgery in May also kept Joshua sidelined – meanwhile shock talks to face YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul progressed behind the scenes.

Paul has since announced a November 14 exhibition bout against WBA lightweight champion Gervonta Davis – who is FIVE STONE lighter.

AJ’s promoter Eddie Hearn is still in talks with Paul’s promotional partner Nakisa Bidarian over a fight in 2026.

He told iFL TV: “They want to move forward with the Joshua fight around March 2026.

“But I said to him, ‘If you get chinned by Gervonta Davis, I can’t possibly make the fight with AJ.’

“Gervonta’s a 135lber. Obviously, they don’t think that’s going to happen but I don’t know too much about it.

“It’s an exhibition with bigger gloves? I don’t know. But they definitely want to go from Gervonta Davis to AJ.

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“The issue is, I don’t think we can wait till November to see how he gets on against Gevonta Davis.

“AJ is back in training with the view to fight in early 2026 so it’s very likely we’ll do our own thing. But we’ll see. We’re still talking.

“We do realise it’s a massive event. If he was to go in there and bash up Gervonta Davis, it wouldn’t be nothing much to boast about.

“It’s a cruiserweight vs a lightweight but at least he’s in there with a pound-for-pound fighter.”

Joshua, 35, is now set to return in January or February in a warm-up bout before turning his attention again to Tyson Fury, 37.

Fury retired in January following two defeats to Oleksandr Usyk, 38, last year but has teased a comeback in 2026.

Paul, 28, meanwhile made a heavyweight fight in November when Mike Tyson controversially made a comeback aged 58.

And over 100 MILLION watched Tyson lose his first professional fight in 20 years over eight shorter rounds of two minutes.

Paul then followed it up by beating ex-middleweight world champ Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, 39, in June to earn himself a No14 WBA cruiserweight ranking.

But his next fight against Davis is not set to count towards his official record with the exhibition unable to be professionally sanctioned.

Paul fights in the 14st 4lb cruiserweight limit of 200lb while Davis is a champ in the 9st 9lb lightweight division of 135lb.

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Before MLB’s newest trophy was offered up as the prize in a competition between the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres, it had to pass through the hands of Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder.

The custom Fender Telecaster guitar, named the Vedder Cup, is said to have been played by its namesake for “about an hour” before it was shipped off to T-Mobile Park in Seattle.

“He gave it a good run through,” George Webb, Pearl Jam’s equipment manager, told the Seattle Times on Monday. “He always likes to feel like he puts a little energy, you know, spiritual energy, into an instrument. Not just hand off something that’s brand-new, never-touched kind of thing. So yeah, jammed on it for about an hour. Had a good time.”

The trophy features many nods from the 60-year-old musician, including a hand-drawn “cresting wave” illustration and an arrow and mod symbol — an allusion to Vedder’s tribute to the Who on his personal guitar. On the back, the Padres and Mariners logos appear alongside text hand-written by the singer and guitarist: “The Vedder Cup Established 2025 by Major League Baseball.”

The Vedder Cup, a guitar shown off Monday by Cal Raleigh of the Seattle Mariners, will go each year to the winner of the full-season series between the Mariners and the San Diego Padres.

(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)

It also contains a logo from EB Research Partnership, a nonprofit co-founded by Vedder and his wife, Jill, after a childhood friend’s son was born with the painful skin condition epidermolysis bullosa. The nonprofit funds research on the disease.

The cup is intended to bring “meaningful awareness” to the rare disorder, Mariners Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Trevor Gooby said in a statement in March, when the longtime rivalry became official.

“We can’t wait to see this rivalry series grow and look forward to battling the Mariners for the Vedder Cup,” Padres Chief Executive Erik Greupner added.

The rivalry, such as it is, arose from forces both real and manufactured, apparently. Vedder has strong ties to both cities, having grown up in San Diego, then moved to Seattle to start Pearl Jam with Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament — hence, the “Vedder” Cup.

Also, upon the introduction of interleague play in the late ’90s, MLB looked for “natural” rivalries between teams like the Padres and Mariners. This year, the league canonized the rivalry, which is said to have begun as geographic, given both teams’ West Coast homes, Reuters reports.

The two teams have met almost annually since 1997. In the informal all-time series, Seattle currently leads 68-63. Additionally, they share a training complex in Peoria, Ariz.

Some fans are still left with questions as to why the competition has turned official, with one claiming on Reddit that “padres and mariners fans literally give no s— about each other.”

Still, they conceded it is “likely the most meaningless and yet kinda fun thing in MLB.”

The trophy was in the spotlight Monday when the teams met for the fourth time this season. The Mariners notched a 9-6 victory over the Padres, taking the season series after three previous wins in San Diego. The Padres beat the Mariners Tuesday, 7-6, and the final game is Wednesday, but the contest has already been decided. Cal Raleigh, the Mariners’ switch-hitting, homer-hammering catcher, known as “Big Dumper,” hoisted and played the trophy in celebration Monday night.

The name and logo for the cup were first shown off in March, but its final design wasn’t finished until the weeks leading up to the fixture.

“Typically on a custom build like this it will take us six months or so to source the wood, get everything mapped out ready to go and take our time to vet the process, apply the graphics, do some test runs,” Chase Paul, director of product development for Fender, told the Seattle Times. “On this we just kind of headed into it in parallel with testing and the production version at the same time, and kind of getting it ready to go.”

In all, it took Fender eight or nine weeks to get the work done, which Paul called a “really incredible effort by the team in the shop.”

Naturally, Vedder doesn’t want the trophy guitar to sit on a shelf for the next year while it’s in the Mariners’ possession. According to Webb, “He wants it to be played.”

“That’s his attitude with everything. It’s a living, breathing instrument. It sounds great,” he added.

As an added bonus to fans, the league announced it would give away limited-edition Vedder Cup hats during the last 2025 game between the two on Wednesday.

To no surprise, the exclusive ticket package that included the hats has sold out.

A lot can change in two and a half months.

Isak was among those players celebrating in a jubilant huddle as the Champions League anthem played out at St James’ 76 days ago.

Newcastle had just secured their place at Europe’s top table and it felt like the club had real momentum going into the summer.

However, this has proved a frustrating window for Newcastle, who have missed out on Benjamin Sesko, Hugo Ekitike, Joao Pedro and James Trafford.

Then there is the Isak situation.

It fell to William Osula to play up front on Friday and Anthony Gordon, who is a winger by trade, is set to follow suit against Atletico Madrid on Saturday.

Yet Isak’s absence, and a lack of signings, has not completely soured the mood on Tyneside.

Saturday’s friendly is a sell-out and, despite this game against Espanyol taking place less than 24 hours beforehand, there were still 30,782 fans present.

They already have an eye on what is to come.

“Is this the way to Barcelona?” supporters in the Gallowgate chanted. “Bayern Munich? Lazio? Roma? The Champions League awaits for me.”

Eddie Palmieri, the Grammy-winning Nuyorican pianist, bandleader and composer who helped innovate Afro-Caribbean music in the States and transform the New York salsa scene, died on Wednesday. He was 88.

According to a post on his official Instagram, Palmieri passed away in his Hackensack, N.J., home. The New York Times confirmed via his youngest daughter, Gabriela Palmieri, that his death came after “an extended illness.”

Multiple celebrities chimed in to pay their respects, including Spike Lee, Ramon Rodriguez and representatives from Fania Records, the pioneering New York salsa label, also released a statement.

“[On Wednesday], Fania Records mourns the loss of the legendary Eddie Palmieri, one of the most innovative and unique artists in music history,” the statement said. Palmieri briefly recorded music with the label but also released music under Tico, Alegre, Concord Picante, RMM and Coco Records.

Others took to social media to mourn the loss, including David Sanchez, a Grammy-winning jazz tenor saxophonist from Puerto Rico, who uploaded a slideshow of photographs of the two. Sanchez recounted the time when his soprano saxophone was stolen — and Palmieri helped him pay for a new one. “Your being and your music will continue to live on in the hearts of many,” Sanchez wrote in the Instagram caption.

Palmieri’s contemporary Chuchito Valdes, a Grammy-winning Cuban pianist and bandleader, also chimed in with an Instagram post lamenting the loss: “A sad day for music. One of the greatest of all time is gone, an innovator. The man who revolutionized salsa and Latin jazz. My great friend.”

Born on Dec. 15, 1936, in East Harlem to Puerto Rican parents from Ponce, Palmieri was the younger brother of Charlie Palmieri, the late piano legend known as the “Giant of the Keyboards.”

The family later moved to the South Bronx, where they opened up a luncheonette called “Mambo”: a name chosen by young Eddie, who was enthralled by the Cuban dance hall rhythms. He often controlled the jukebox with blissful Latin jazz tunes by Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez and Machito.

Palmieri was deeply influenced and inspired by his older brother, who was nine years his senior and introduced him to prominent big-band acts of the 1940s, like Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and Woody Herman, all of whom seemed to dissolve by the end of World War II. Though Palmieri had an itch to lean into the timbales like Tito Puente, he would eventually follow in his brother’s footsteps and take piano lessons from Margaret Bonds, one of the most prominent African American concert pianists at the time.

Although he briefly joined his uncle’s orchestra, Chino y sus Almas Tropicales, as a timbal player, Palmieri rose to fame as a pianist, playing with various bands including the Eddie Forrester Orchestra, Johnny Segui and His Orchestra, and eventually Tito Rodriguez and His Orchestra, which was a main act at the Palladium Ballroom between 1958 to 1960.

“In the audience, you could have maybe a Marlon Brando, Kim Novak, all the Hollywood starlets because it was the height of the mambo,” said Palmieri in a 2013 interview with Jo Reed. “On Saturday, you had the blue-collar, mostly Puerto Rican. And then Sunday was black, Afro-American. It was intermingled or different nationalities that had nothing to do whether you were green, purple, white, we came to dance.”

But in 1961, Palmieri went on to start his own band, La Perfecta, an ironic title given its not-so-perfect setup. It formed as an eight-piece Cuban conjunto, which ditched the traditional jazzy saxophone. There were timbales, congas, bongos, bass, piano and vocals — but with a twist of its own kind: the inclusion of two trombones, played by Barry Rogers and Jose Rodriguez, instead of the costly four-set trumpets. Palmieri also added a whistling flute, played by George Castro, for a charanga edge (in the place of a traditional violin).

“La Perfecta changed everything in the history of our genre, in my opinion. Certainly in New York,” said Palmieri. “And then influenced the world, because after that all the pawn shops got rid of their trombones.”

His group helped usher in the iconic salsa genre with their first album, “Eddie Palmieri and His Conjunto ‘La Perfecta,’” dubbing him the nickname “Madman of salsa.” However, he was not too fond of the emerging term, which seemed to cram different styles like mambo, charanga, rumba, guaracha and danzón into one single category.

“Afro-Cuban is where we get the music,” explained Palmieri in a 2012 interview with the Smithsonian Oral History Project. “The influence of the Puerto Rican is the one [that] upheld the rhythmical patterns and the genre of Cuba. So then that becomes Afro-Caribbean.”

La Perfecta went on to release its most famed album, “Azúcar Pa’ Ti” in 1965. It included the song “Azúcar,” an eight-minute track that was later added to the National Recording Registry in 2009.

In 1976, Palmieri became the first to win a Grammy for the inaugural category of best Latin recording, for his album “Sun of Latin Music.” He holds a total of eight Grammy awards. In 2013, the National Endowment for the Arts honored him as a Jazz Master and the Latin Grammys granted him a Lifetime Achievement Award.

But Eddie Palmieri’s impact spanned beyond his own accomplishments. He was a mentor, a teacher and an advocate for Latin music and culture, which includes advocating twice for the inclusion of the Latin jazz album category in the Grammys — first in 1995, then again in 2012 after its removal.

Palmieri was predeceased by his wife of 58 years, Iraida Palmieri, who passed away in 2014 — and who he often referred to as “Mi Luz Mayor.” He is survived by his four daughters, Renee, Eydie, Ileana and Gabriela; his son, Edward Palmieri II; and four grandchildren.

He told BBC Sport: “We signed a two-fight deal, we were ready to go. The date was announced straight after the first fight for September, done a lot of negotiations in terms of venues, dates.

“They had all agreed September 20th, then Eubank came out and said he wasn’t ready.”

Asked if Benn was prepared to wait until the end of the year, Hearn added: “So we have to give them a chance.

“We just appeal to Eubank, if you’re not ready to go back to war with Benn and you’d rather sit at a poker table in Las Vegas, good luck to you. But let us move on.”

“We’re ready to move on, drop down to 147 and get a world title,” said Benn.

The first fight was organised by Ring Magazine, which is owned by Turki Alalshikh, and it was thought the rematch would also fall under the Riyadh Season promotion.

Appearing on Saturday’s broadcast before Oleksandr Usyk’s win over Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium, Alalshikh said the Eubank-Benn bout could still happen and suggested January or February as potential alternative dates.

Eubank has not commented on the situation himself, and it is unclear when an official decision will be made.

The 35-year-old was fined £10,000 earlier this month by the British Boxing Board of Control over “misuse of social media” in the build-up to the first contest.

LITTLE TOKYO — On a Tuesday morning on downtown Los Angeles’ 1st Street, the immigrants are out in force.

I mean, they are everywhere: Sweeping, scrubbing graffiti off walls, opening their shops, grabbing lattes on the way to work.

Send in the Marines!

Here in the heart of Little Tokyo, where immigration protesters swept through Monday night, it’s the white faces that stand out — the way it has been for decades all over downtown. With its gritty streets and sometimes gritty history, these urban blocks with their cheaper rents and welcoming enclaves have long been where people migrate when they cross borders into the United States.

Which — though I certainly don’t want to speculate on the inner workings of Stephen Miller’s brain — probably means blocks like this one were on President Trump immigration czar’s mind when he posted this on social media: “[H]uge swaths of the city where I was born now resemble failed third world nations. A ruptured, balkanized society of strangers.”

“Eddie” lives in Little Tokyo and helped clean up after immigration protests in Little Tokyo on Tuesday. He holds Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status and said he is afraid to go to the protests for fear he could be deported for doing so. Cleaning up, he said, is his way of participating.

(Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)

That, “Eddie” told me, is bunk. Eddie is a “Dreamer,” with semi-legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, who emigrated from Mexico as a kid and didn’t want to share his last name because he fears the current immigration sweeps. For the past two years, he’s lived in an upstairs apartment that overlooks this block of hotels, boutiques and restaurants. I met him on the sidewalk in front of his place, his palms stained black with soot from picking up burned lights and banners from the night before.

Eddie, who dreams about someday running for public office, said people such as himself are in “a very vulnerable” situation right now, so though he’s always been involved in civic issues, he doesn’t feel safe going to protests that have turned downtown Los Angeles into a national spectacle, and have offered President Trump an excuse to flout law and history by calling in the military.

Instead, Eddie is cleaning up — because he doesn’t want people to drive by and think this neighborhood is a mess.

“It’s not representative, you know,” he says of the charred heap in front of him. “So I’m out here.”

Eddie said he loves it here, because “it’s one of the few communities where, like, it’s close knit. I see people that I’m for sure were here in 1945 and I love them, and I know that they know of my existence, and I’m thankful for theirs.”

Before we can talk much more, we’re interrupted by Alex Gerwer, a Long Beach resident who has come out for the day to help scrub away the graffiti that some rogue protesters left behind.

Folks, not going to lie, “F— ICE” is everywhere. I mean, everywhere — there’s got to be a spray paint shortage at this point.”

Gerwer, the son of two concentration camp survivors, is here with the political group 5051, which has been staging anti-Trump rallies across the country. Gerwer said he and his group decided they wanted to do something more proactive than just protest, so here they are.

“We want to clean that off and show Trump, the National Guard, you know the folks from the Marines, that this is clearly political theater,” Gerwer said. “And I feel sorry for all these law enforcement people, because many of them, they’re in a position where they’re being put between the Constitution and a tyrannical president.”

Misael Santos, a manager at a ramen restaurant in Little Tokyo, said that most of the restaurants in the neighborhood hire immigrant workers because “they know immigrants work hard.”

(Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)

Down the block, I met Misael Santos in front of the ramen restaurant where he works as a manager. He was asking the folks at the Japanese American National Museum on the corner whether they had any surveillance footage, because lights and a tent had been stolen off the restaurant’s patio the night before. They didn’t.

Santos, a Mexican immigrant, told me he didn’t like the stealing and vandalism.

“I understand the protests, but that is no excuse to destroy public property,” he said.

Earlier, Mayor Karen Bass had tweeted, “Let me be clear: ANYONE who vandalized Downtown or looted stores does not care about our immigrant communities,” and Santos agreed with that.

“Immigrants work hard,” he told me. Which is why, he said, many of the Asian-owned business around here hire Latinos.

He said that this neighborhood, with its mix of ethnicities, is “comfortable and safe,” but lately, his employees are also fearful. They don’t want to come to work because they fear raids, but “we have to work,” he said with a resigned shrug.

But let me get back to Stephen Miller, since he’s driving a lot of this chaos. Replying to Bass’ tweet about vandals, Miller said on social media, “By ‘immigrant communities,’ Mayor Bass actually means ‘illegal alien communities.’ She is demonstrating again her sole objective here is to shield illegals from deportation, at any cost.”

William T Fujioka, chair of the Board of Trustees of the Japanese American National Museum, worked with volunteers to remove graffiti after some protesters defaced the building in Little Tokyo.

(Anita Chabria/Los Angeles Times)

That kind of rhetoric hearkens to the dark days of this neighborhood, William T Fujioka, chair of the Board of Trustees of the Japanese American National Museum, told me, when I finally made it down to his patch of this neighborhood.

Fujioka and I talked in the plaza where buses pulled up after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to transport Japanese Americans to prison camps. His own grandfather, he said, was imprisoned in such a camp.

Protesters had defaced the museum, a nearby Buddhist temple and a public art sculpture called the OOMA cube, meant to symbolize human oneness. Fujioka called the vandalism “heartbreaking,” but also said it was not representative of most protesters.

“We’re strong supporters of peaceful protests and also immigration rights because of what happened to our community,” he told me. “Our community is a community of immigrants.”

Fujioka told me how one of his grandfathers immigrated legally in 1905, but the other wasn’t so lucky. They wouldn’t let him land in L.A., he said, so he “was dropped off in Mexico and crossed the Rio Grande. He walked from Mexico with 300 other men up to Texas, across the Rio Grande and New Mexico, Arizona and California.”

Fujioka grew up not far from this plaza in Boyle Heights, were so many people with journeys similar to that of his grandfather wind up, then and now. Boyle Heights, he said, “is the ultimate melting pot. In Boyle Heights before the war, you had Japanese, Latinos, African Americans, you had Jews, you had Italians, and you had Russians who fled communist Russia. And we all grew up together, and we didn’t care who anyone was. All we cared about is, if you’re from the neighborhood.”

Just behind Fujioka, I saw that Gerwer had found his group and was busy scrubbing the museum’s windows. One of those with him, S.A. Griffin, had been at the protests downtown this week. He said they were mostly peaceful, except for the “idiots” who covered their faces and incited violence as the sun went down.

“It’s the vampires that come out at night,” Griffin said. And that’s really the all of it. There will always be agitators, especially at night.

But daylight brings clarity.

Indigo Rosen-Lopez, left, Maruko Bridgewater and Colin McQuade walk through Little Tokyo on Tuesday, the morning after immigration protests. Rosen-Lopez and McQuade are half brothers and Bridgewater is their grandmother’s best friend.

(Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)

Across the street, I met 88-year-old Maruko Bridgewater, walking with half brothers Colin McQuade and Indigo Rosen-Lopez. The men consider Bridgewater their grandmother, though she’s really their maternal grandmother’s best friend.

They were walking Bridgewater back to her nearby apartment and said they were worried about her during the protests and even in the aftermath — she had just stepped over broken glass from a nearby shop.

“It’s really scary to see her walk around by herself,” McQuade told me.

These “grandkids” may worry, but let me tell you, may the Lord above make me half as sharp and stylish as Bridgewater at that age. She came to the United States through New York in 1976. I asked her whether she liked Trump’s crackdown on immigrants and she told me, “Not really, but not Biden either.”

But this trio, walking on a clear June morning when the gloom has burned away, are everything that is good and right with immigrant communities. Between the three, they represent Hungarian, Bulgarian, Native American, Irish, Scottish and Japanese.

McQuade told me that his grandparents met during World War II.

“Literally, like, in the middle of the biggest war between America and Japan, my grandparents found each other, and they fell in love, and they … created a life for us from literally nothing,” he said.

That is downtown Los Angeles, where immigrants come to build a life. If that looks like the third world nightmare to some, it’s because they are blind to what they are seeing.

Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence’s children just built on the friends’ relationship without even casting them in a new movie together: Their two oldest are now married — to each other.

Yup, the two comedy legends are also in-laws.

“Saturday Night Live” veteran Murphy, 64, broke the news in an interview airing Thursday on “The Jennifer Hudson Show.” He explained to his “Dreamgirls” co-star that everyone in both families expected a big wedding after the two got last fall, but his son Eric and Lawrence’s daughter Jasmin wound up tying the knot without a lot of hoopla.

“Yeah, we’re in-laws,” he said, noting that now “Bad Boys” star Lawrence, 60, “doesn’t have to pay for the big wedding.”

“They got married about two weeks ago,” Murphy told Hudson. “They went off. Everybody was making the big wedding plans and then they decided they wanted to do something quiet with just the two of them and then they got married.

“They didn’t have a wedding. They went off and they got married at the church. … They just had the two of them and the preacher.”

Murphy said he expects the newly blended clan to have “a big party” to celebrate the occasion soon.

Eric Murphy, 35, proposed to Jasmin Lawrence, 29, last November in a small event with high production values: myriad candles, romantic lighting, flower petals covering the floor and a glowing orange heart as a backdrop. The two had gone Instagram-official with their relationship back in June 2021.

“We’re engaged!! God truly blessed us with a love that feels like destiny. We couldn’t be more excited for this next chapter,” she wrote on Instagram. “Special thank you to everyone who made this moment so beautiful!!”

Jasmin Lawrence is Martin Lawrence’s eldest daughter. She’s from his first marriage, to Patricia Southall. She has two younger sisters, Iyana and Amara, from her dad’s marriage to Shamicka Gibbs, which ended in 2012.

Eric Murphy is the oldest of Eddie Murphy’s 10 children. His mom is Paulette McNeely. The comedian has three more sons and six daughters with four other women, including his current wife and mother of two, model Paige Butcher.

Eddie Murphy’s crack about Lawrence not paying for the big wedding goes back to when the latter joked to Jimmy Kimmel in 2022 that their children might have a “comedy super-baby” together and said, “I’m gonna try to get Eddie to pay for it.”

Murphy snarked back a year later on Canadian TV, saying, “If it goes down, Martin is paying. And the wedding better be wonderful.”

We bet it was.

Times staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario contributed to this report.

ANTHONY JOSHUA is to have surgery on his elbow THIS WEEK – as talks to finally fight “big tease” Tyson Fury move a step closer.

Joshua, 35, is yet to return since his September knockout defeat to Daniel Dubois, 27, with a secret injury delaying his comeback.

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AJ has since revealed the setback was caused by a problem with his elbow – which promoter Eddie Hearn reveals is due to be fixed this week.

Hearn told SunSport: “He just goes back into camp and just can’t fire on all cylinders consistently.

“So he can go back, have a couple of sessions, bit of soreness in the elbow.

“They tried to let it rest and recover and they’ve told him that I think it’s this week, he has a small keyhole surgery in the arm.

“Clear out, and it’s four-six weeks, he’s good to go. So I think we’re looking post-September.”

Following Joshua’s loss and Fury’s double defeats to Oleksandr Usyk, 38, last year, it set up the beaten Brits to finally settle their overdue score.

That was until Fury announced a shock retirement – the fourth of his career – in January only one month after Usyk won their rematch.

But the unpredictable Gypsy King has since ended his social media silence to begin hinting at a comeback – leaving Hearn hopeful.

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The promoter said: “Tyson Fury is a big tease, every day I open up Instagram like today and he’s got his wraps on saying he’s done 12 rounds.

“He looks super fit, Tyson Fury, he looks like he’s ready to go now! Which is encouraging, but obviously probably the delay that AJ’s got is a blessing, to be honest with you.

“One, you’ve got Usyk against Dubois coming up so that gives you a little bit of time.

“And number two, you’ve got Tyson Fury who could potentially come back to the ring so it’s gonna be interesting to see what plays out.”

Turki Alalshikh’s introduction to boxing and his deep Saudi pockets have helped bridge the gap between Hearn and long-time rival Frank Warren.

The previously warring promoters even share the sports streaming platform DAZN now – paving the way for talks between AJ and Fury.

Hearn admitted: “I’d be lying if I said we haven’t discussed it socially, because obviously everyone’s desperate to make it happen.

“But, no one said, ‘Oh, I think it’s coming, I think he’s coming back.’ But at the same time, he’s training.

Tyson Fury is a big tease, every day I open up Instagram like today and he’s got his wraps on saying he’s done 12 rounds. He looks super fit, Tyson Fury, he looks like he’s ready to go now! Which is encouraging

Eddie Hearn

“And I feel like with Tyson Fury over the years, you’ve seen him not training and balloon out of shape and then it takes him a long time to come back.

“Now it looks like he’s either ready to fight or he’s ready to begin camp, which is hugely encouraging. But I just don’t think he’ll be able to leave it alone, if I’m honest with you.

“Because, the money’s one thing, but just the occasion and the challenge, and he’s a competitor, he’s a winner. And I just can’t believe he’s gonna let it slide.”

While Fury is Joshua & Co’s main target, Hearn warned they will await the result of Dubois’ July 19 rematch with Usyk at Wembley.

Hearn is adamant AJ will fight before the year ends – with or without Fury.

He warned: “Next couple of months, if there’s no movement, we fight.

“I mean there’s no way AJ’s not fighting this year. So who that will be? I can’t tell you.

“I mean, that’s the million dollar question at all times, but I think more importantly is, do we get any news from Fury in the next four, six, eight weeks?

“If we do, we’ll fight him this year. If not, we’ll fight and then maybe he comes back next year, who knows?

“But I’d be lying if I said we weren’t desperate to see him return. But, at the same time we can’t just wait around and see what happens.”

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