Four days after Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua was reported in peril, both fighters are heading to London for Wednesday’s press conference and the December 11 fight in Cardiff appears back on course.

The turn came in stages on Monday, and the first mover was the broadcaster.

Ariel Helwani reported Monday afternoon that Netflix is trying to mediate the dispute and that a deadline was placed on the parties Sunday night. “It feels like there’s great optimism that things are moving forward,” Helwani said. “Some are saying, ‘Done deal. The storm has passed.’ Others are saying there are still a few more issues.” He added that he expects the fight to happen: “Everyone wants it to happen. Everyone is moving toward it happening.”

Hours later the testing standoff broke. SunSport reported that as of 1pm Monday, Fury had still not enrolled with the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association, and that Joshua was considering skipping Wednesday’s launch press conference over it. By Monday evening, a source close to Fury’s team said he had signed up and supplied VADA with a whereabouts form so he can be tested at any time.

The delay appears to have been contractual rather than evasive. Joshua’s contract required both men to enter the VADA pool when the deals were signed. Fury’s did not, and his side had said publicly they would enroll once the bout was official. “Once the fight has been officially finalised, VADA will be the first people we will be calling,” Goldstar Promotions told SunSport last week, after Joshua posted an email from VADA president Margaret Goodman asking whether Fury intended to enroll.

Eddie Hearn made the same point on Saturday. “The drug testing protocol is the same as what has always been in the contract. It wasn’t adhered to in its form,” Hearn said. “I don’t actually, necessarily blame Tyson Fury for that because I don’t think, as we have found out on many occasions, I don’t think what is in AJ’s contract is the same as what is in Tyson’s contract. Testing was supposed to start when the original contracts were signed. And it didn’t for them. This is not me saying he didn’t enroll, I don’t think he was obligated to enroll. But in our contract he was obligated to enroll.”

Neither Joshua nor Hearn has suggested any wrongdoing, and both have been careful to say so.

By late afternoon, Mike Coppinger of The Ring reported that both fighters are in camp and travelling for the face-off. “All parties are working together to do what’s best to maximize the promotion of this heavyweight super fight Dec. 11 on Netflix,” Coppinger wrote, adding that “Turki Alalshikh has been pushing hard during the last 48 hours to close the deal.” A new Ring-branded poster followed, showing Fury and Joshua in Union Jacks outside the Principality Stadium.

That is a significant change of tone from the weekend. Hearn told Sky Sports on Sunday there was “at the moment nothing confirmed for next week press conference wise,” and made clear Matchroom viewed its attendance as leverage: “There wouldn’t be a press conference without us.”

What has not been announced is any resolution of the actual dispute. The fight was thrown into doubt over Dana White’s role after the Netflix release named him as collaborating with Alalshikh’s The Ring to promote the event, which Hearn says Joshua’s contract forbids. Nobody has said that question is settled. Coppinger’s language, all parties working together, is the kind of phrasing that lets an argument be parked rather than won.

White has not backed off. At the Zuffa Boxing 11 press conference in London on Saturday, he said he did not know whether the fight was happening, called Hearn “full of f***ing shit,” and insisted his own involvement was not his decision to make. Asked whose decision it was, he declined to say. He also dismissed his own broadcaster’s framing of his role, after Max Kellerman told viewers White was “assisting Turki in a personal capacity, not as a promoter.” White’s response: “I don’t know where that came from. That was weird. We’re promoting the fight right now.”

Asked whether he will attend Wednesday’s press conference, White said: “I guess I’ll leave that as a surprise.”

He did clear up one thing about the undercard. White dismissed reports that Manny Pacquiao would face Shakur Stevenson on the card, and said a Keyshawn Davis against Richardson Hitchins bout was “more likely” instead.

Fury spent the weekend blaming Hearn, accusing Joshua and Matchroom of trying to pull out and putting the chances of the fight happening at “one per cent.” Those comments now look like the low point rather than the trajectory.

The press conference is scheduled for Wednesday, September 30 at 6pm at British Airways ARC at Olympia in London. A photoshoot is expected alongside it.

There is one detail worth sitting with. For six weeks this fight has been pulled between two promoters, a Saudi financier and a sanctioning body, and none of the people arguing about it could settle it. What appears to have moved it in the end was pressure from the people paying for it, the broadcaster setting a deadline and the financier pushing to close. Neither of them promotes boxing for a living. Neither of them had to.