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-awaited fight between these two British giants will raise interest from UK fans, but that’s it. It’s more of a show for people in other parts of the world. American fans don’t want to buy the Joshua vs.
Fights involving Ryan Garcia and Gervonta Davis are more interesting to the US 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 US for ages.
Hearn said on social media that he still thinks the Joshua-Fury fight is the one that draws 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 21.
The positive aspect of the fight is that it will still make a lot of money for Joshua and Fury and their promoters. With the Saudis funding the match, it will be profitable despite being a fight for old time rather than one that has any meaning.
Joshua-Fury = Domestic Scrap
British fans will still be eager to see Joshua and Fury fight, but it’s not the best fight in boxing. It is simply the best for the domestic level in the UK. If Fury defeats Usyk in December, that will go a long way in making a fight with Joshua look less like the old-time money guy and more real.
Unfortunately, Fury is likely to be beaten again by Usyk in their rematch on December 21st, but this time by KO without a referee stepping in to stop the UK like the last time they fought on May 18th.
It would always be a match between two heavyweights, pampered, manufactured, marketed to be like the real thing. They were both fool’s gold from the moment they turned pro.
Joshua has been carefully matched by Hearn since turning pro in 2013, and his career would have been very different had he been thrown to the wolves earlier.
For example, Hearn didn’t schedule a fight between Joshua and Klitschko until the latter was 41 years old, coming off a one-year layoff and a loss to Fury. Hearn could have made that fight in 2013 when Wladimir was still fighting at a high level. This is just one example of Hearn’s strategic matchmaking that benefited Joshua and helped turn him into a star without taking risky fights that he could have lost.
Fury would have two losses to Deontay Wilder and one against John McDermott. He would have had a lot more if he had been matched up against fighters like Martin Bakole, Filip Hrgovic, Zhilei Zhang and Joseph Parker.
Are UK fans still buying 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 wins were tomato cans fed to AJ by Hearn as part of his expensive rebuilding effort to bring him back to what was hoped to be the factory level conditioning he was in when he was kicked off the lot in in 2013.
“AJ vs. Fury,” said Eddie Hearn when asked who is the biggest match in boxing.
Hearn is right that Joshua-Fury is the biggest fight that can be made for UK fans but not worldwide. These two British heavyweights are seen as old, washed up by the Americans, and never as good as originally believed. Joshua and Fury were both taken care of by their promoters to make them look bigger than they were, but neither was ever really solid.
His best wins were against his first Wladimir Klitschko. Wladimir was 39 when Fury defeated him in 2015 and 41 when Joshua stopped him in 2017.
