Promoter Eddie Hearn is adamant that the all-British clash between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury remains the biggest fight in the sport.
The long overdue fight between these two British giants will create interest from UK fans, but that’s about it. It’s more of a spectacle for people elsewhere in the world. American fans won’t want to purchase the Joshua vs. Fury fight on PPV unless it’s priced low.
Fights involving Ryan Garcia and Gervonta Davis are more interesting for the U.S. market for PPV than a Joshua-Fury fight. Garcia-Davis brought in over 1 million PPV buys, making it one of the most successful fights in the U.S. for ages.
Hearn said on social media that he still thinks the Joshua-Fury fight is the one that attracts the most interest from fans. However, that view may change if the 36-year-old Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) loses his rematch with Oleksandr Usyk on December 21st.
The positive aspect of the match is that it will still bring in a lot of money for Joshua and Fury and their promoters. With the Saudis financing the match, it’s going to be profitable despite being a fight for old time’s sake rather than one that has any significance.
Joshua-Fury = Domestic Scrap
The British fans will still be eager to see Joshua and Fury fight, but it’s NOT the best fight in boxing. It’s merely the best for the domestic level in the UK. If Fury defeats Usyk in December, that would greatly help make a fight with Joshua look less like an old-timer’s type of money grab and appear more real.
Unfortunately, Fury is likely to get beaten again by Usyk in their rematch on December 21st, but this time by knockout without a meddling referee stepping in to prevent the UK like the last time they fought on May 18th.
It would still be a match between two shopworn, pampered, manufactured heavyweights marketed to look like the real thing. They were both fool’s gold from the moment they turned pro.
Joshua has been matched carefully by Hearn since he turned professional in 2013, and his career would have been much different if he’d been thrown to the wolves earlier.
For example, Hearn didn’t schedule a fight between Joshua and Klitschko until the latter was 41, coming off a year-long layoff and a loss to Fury. Hearn could have made that fight in 2013 when Wladimir was still fighting at a high level. That’s just one example of strategic matchmaking by Hearn that benefited Joshua and helped turn him into a star without taking risky fights that he might have lost.
Fury should have had two losses to Deontay Wilder and one against John McDermott. He would have had a lot more if he’d been matched against fighters like Martin Bakole, Filip Hrgovic, Zhilei Zhang, and Joseph Parker.
Will UK Fans Still Buy AJ-Fury?
Fury will be 0-2 going into a fight against Joshua (28-4, 25 KOs), who has a 4-3 record in his last seven contests. The four victories were tomato cans fed to AJ by Hearn as part of his expensive rebuild job to bring him back to what had been hoped to mint factory-level condition that he’d been in when he was rolled off the lot in 2013.
“AJ vs. Fury,” said Eddie Hearn when asked what the biggest match in boxing is.
Hearn is right about Joshua-Fury being the biggest fight that can be made for UK fans but not worldwide. These two British heavyweights are viewed as old, washed up by Americans, and never as good as originally believed. Joshua and Fury were both carefully maneuvered by their promoters to make them look greater than they were, but neither was ever truly solid.
Their best wins were against past his prime Wladimir Klitschko. Wladimir was 39 when Fury defeated him in 2015 and 41 when Joshua stopped him in 2017.
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