Anthony Joshua’s tax payment shows boxer earned £80million in two years

Two-time world heavyweight champion Joshua has been marked as one of the highest tax-paying celebrities in the UK, beating out the likes of Stormzy and Harry Styles

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Oleksandr Usyk returns Anthony Joshua’s belts following fight

Anthony Joshua made over £80million from two fights in as many years as he was named among the highest tax-paying celebrities.

The two-time world heavyweight champion paid £3.8m in tax – more than the likes of Stormzy, Cara Delevigne and Harry Styles.

The eye-watering sums place him as the fifth highest-paying celebrity on the 2022 tax list published by The Times.

Joshua is one of the most well-known sportsmen in Britain, and boasts sponsorship deals with the likes of Lucozade, Under Armour and Hugo Boss.

He also has a unique broadcast deal where his fights are shown internationally on streaming platform DAZN, except for in the UK where he is shown on Sky Sports Box Office, although that deal has yet to be renewed.

It would cost the streaming service a hefty sum to get him for the final piece of their 200-country deal, with Sky Sports boasting monstrous pay-per-view sales for his fights.

He reportedly sold over 600,000 PPVs for his bout with Kubrat Pulev in 2020, for which he took a significant pay cut due to only being allowed to fight in front of 1,000 fans due to coronavirus restrictions at the SSE Arena, Wembley.

And he may have as much as doubled that for his world title defence against Usyk, which took place in front of 65,000 fans at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Joshua’s last two fights have taken place in the UK, meaning he has paid essentially all of his tax here, as opposed to, for example, Tyson Fury who fights in Nevada in America and must pay there as well.

It appears that Fury will, however, have a homecoming fight this year, with his mandated world title defence against Dillian Whyte to take place by April 29.

Joshua may also fight in the UK this year when he rematches Usyk for the unified heavyweight titles, with the winners of those two bouts likely to fight for an astronomical purse in Saudi Arabia at the end of the year.

The pair almost reached a deal to fight for the undisputed title last August, with the Saudis willing to pay a whopping £106m between the two for the bout.

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But Fury was locked into a contractual agreement, which was maintained by a lengthy arbitration process, to give Deontay Wilder a third fight first.

And after brutally dispatching of the American, Fury is now set for a mandatory WBC heavyweight title defence against Whyte before Joshua faces Usyk later in the year.

It is believed that Fury and Whyte will square off on April 23, while Joshua could be forced to wait until June for his shot at redemption against the unbeaten Ukrainian.

Once those two fights are out of the way, however, the two winners will no longer be locked into any contractual obligation that would stop an undisputed fight from happening.

Fury, or Whyte, will have just satisfied the WBC’s mandatory, while Joshua and Usyk’s initial fight was mandated by the WBO, with the WBA and IBF still waiting to secure their mandatory challengers at the top of the division.