Former heavyweight boxer Dave Allen has disclosed that Anthony Joshua did not pay him to be his sparring partner, unlike Tyson Fury.

Former heavyweight boxer Dave Allen has stated that Anthony Joshua did not pay him to be a sparring partner early in his career.

Allen has sparred the top heavyweights in the last decade, including Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury, and Oleksandr Usyk. He also disclosed that, while he was rewarded by most fighters, he was not paid to spar with Joshua. “As time went on, I started getting paid for sparring other boxers, and I’m starting to question, ‘Why has he never paid me?’,” he claimed on his website.

“To be honest, in my head, I’m thinking, ‘He’s took the p*** out of me here.’ I was sparring two or three times a week and times, six, eight up to 10 rounds at a time with him. I should’ve been smarter. It’s no one’s fault but my own. But yeah, I did think I deserved to get paid. It was professional boxing.”

Of Fury, Allen said: “We were mates, and it was kind of like, ‘Look, come over do the first few rounds. You get something out of it yourself.’ He’d go on and spar other sparring partners, and you could see he was putting a lot more into the shots and the intensity would change.

“And I wasn’t expecting to get paid for it, to be honest. I was happy to go over, help out, it was getting me out the house and I would get some rounds. But he’d always pay me. Maybe between £100-£150 a time, could be two-three times a week, so after petrol and that, I might make £300 a week.”

Allen revealed his best sparring experience was when he visited Wladimir Klitschko’s training camp. “First of all, in terms of where we were put up, it was like a mansion in the Alps, it was a beautiful, beautiful place, probably the nicest place I’ve stayed, if not a little boring really,” he said.

“I was only there five days, but there was nowhere to go or anything to do. The food was incredible and on top of that they paid me almost €1,500 a week. I was only there for five days, but they paid me in full as well. They could’ve probably paid me less, but they paid me the full €1,500.”