diff --git a/spacy/matcher/matcher.pxd b/spacy/matcher/matcher.pxd
index 98df3ea92..51854d562 100644
--- a/spacy/matcher/matcher.pxd
+++ b/spacy/matcher/matcher.pxd
@@ -78,5 +78,3 @@ cdef class Matcher:
     cdef public object _extra_predicates
     cdef public object _seen_attrs
     cdef public object _fuzzy_compare
-
-cpdef bint _default_fuzzy_compare(s1: str, s2: str, fuzzy: int)
diff --git a/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyi b/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyi
index 8443ddd14..5371523cb 100644
--- a/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyi
+++ b/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyi
@@ -53,4 +53,4 @@ class Matcher:
     ) -> List[Span]: ...
     def _normalize_key(self, key: Any) -> Any: ...
 
-def _default_fuzzy_compare(s1: str, s2: str, fuzzy: int) -> bool: ...
+def _default_fuzzy_compare(s1: str, s2: str, fuzzy: int = -1) -> bool: ...
diff --git a/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyx b/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyx
index 570c3bc1a..963c156d9 100644
--- a/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyx
+++ b/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyx
@@ -1150,7 +1150,7 @@ def _get_extensions(spec, string_store, name2index):
     return attr_values
 
 
-cpdef bint _default_fuzzy_compare(s1: str, s2: str, fuzzy: int):
+cpdef bint _default_fuzzy_compare(s1: str, s2: str, fuzzy: int = -1):
     distance = min(len(s1), len(s2))
     distance -= 1 # don't allow completely different tokens
     if fuzzy == -1: # FUZZY operator with unspecified fuzzy