Furious Kubrat Pulev determined to recapture his position and get the fight with Anthony Joshua, writes John Dennen

KUBRAT PULEV is determined to work his way back to a shot at unified heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.

The Bulgarian was due to fight Joshua on October 28, until an injury forced him off the show to be replaced by Carlos Takam on 12 days notice.

Pulev was the mandatory challenger for the IBF belt, a role Takam also occupied. Now Pulev is focused on recapturing his position in the rankings and getting a fight with Joshua.

“Of course he is,” Pulev’s promoter Kalle Sauerland told Boxing News.

“Pulev didn’t want to pull out. I’ve had big row with him,” he revealed. “He’s furious that I pulled him out. I didn’t pull him out, he was injured. So he had to not fight. But he wanted to fight that much.”

It was brave but Pulev couldn’t go into a fight of that magnitude with only one arm. Eventually though he does deserve another world title fight.

“You talk levels in heavyweight boxing and I think for me there’s eight, nine, 10 guys are at the level and they’re all very close to each other. There’s Joshua, you saw Takam for example. He didn’t surprise me Takam, he didn’t surprise me at all. I was surprised people were surprised. He was always going to be a livewire. If you look at it, Pulev, [Alexander] Povetkin, Takam, I know people in the UK will say Whyte but for me there’s still a distance. But Dillian Whyte is also an interesting character. There’s always people talking about it. But I do think there’s a certain level which Pulev is definitely within. On anyone’s day any one of these can win,” Sauerland said.

“There’s a lot of interesting fights you can make in the heavyweight division and there’s no clear number one for me.”