By Scott Gilfoid: Tickets for IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua’s first defense of his title against American Dominic Breazeale (17-0, 15 KOs) sold out in an incredible 30 minutes earlier today for their clash on June 25 at the O2 Arena in London, UK. The O2 has a seating capacity of 20,000 seats.
That’s a lot of tickets to be sold out so quickly for what amount to be a mismatch. The 6’7” Breazeale arguably isn’t even the 5th best heavyweight in the United States, and here is getting a world title shot.
At this point, I don’t think it even matters who Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn throws in the ring for him to fight. Hearn could probably dig up a third tier scrub and Joshua’s diehard fans would scoop up the tickets gleefully and be happy they got them. The downside of all this is that if fans are willing to purchase tickets to Joshua’s mismatches, it might take away some of the motivation that Hearn would normally have in finding live bodies for Joshua to fight.
If Hearn can just throw any fighter in the ring with Joshua and sell out the O2 Arena in bring in 600,000 PPV buys on Sky Box Office, then it could potentially lead to fodder opponents matched against him. I’m just saying. Don’t go saying I didn’t tell you so if we see Joshua fighting Dereck Chisora or David Price in the near future instead of talents like Joseph Parker, Deontay Wilder, or Carlos Takam. No, I don’t consider the flabby Tyson Fury as a talent. I see him as just a slight level above the likes of Chisora and Price.
Joshua is coming off a 2nd round knockout win over IBF heavyweight belt holder Charles Martin on April 9 of this month. Martin has taken a lot of flak from the boxing world for how poorly he fought against Joshua. Martin didn’t look engaged in that fight. I mean, he had a plan, but it looked like he was waiting around hoping that Joshua would eventually tire himself out so that he could pounce on him in the later rounds.
It would have been a good plan if Martin had remembered that he needed to throw punches in order to get to the later rounds. You can’t just hang around aiting for Joshua to gas out from throwing nonstop punches. If you do that, then you’ll ever get blasted out or the referee will step in and stop the fight on you with you still on your feet.
We’ve seen plenty of those type of fights with Joshua, which is why Martin should have let his hands go so that he had a fighting chance of winning. I blame Martin’s loss on a poor game plan. He had a chance of winning, but his faulty game plan blew it for him.
It’s hard to believe anyone would want to make a fuss over Joshua-Breazeale because it’s not a good fight in my view. Both Breazeale and Joshua are former Olympics. Joshua won a gold medal in the 2012 Olympics, albeit a controversial one. For his part, Breazeale was quickly sent packing in the 2012 Olympics in losing in his first fight of the competition against a Russian fighter. Breazeale, 6’7”, looked terrible in that fight, and it was hard to believe he was representing the U.S in that year.
“Right now there is no hotter ticket in World boxing than Anthony Joshua and he has proved it today with another day one sell out at the O2,” said Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn bragged. “As the journey continues we will have to consider more and more stadiums to cope with the demand. June 25 is going to be another great night with Anthony’s first defence against Breazeale and the huge all British clash between George Groves and Martin Murray with more major championship fights added shortly.”
In the co-feature bout, super middleweights George Groves and Martin Murray will be fighting it out. I’m not sure if you can call that a good fight. I’m mildly interested just to see which of these flawed fighters implodes. Goodness knows, we’ve seen both Groves and Murray go to pieces when they’ve stepped it up in the past in important fights. I don’t think this fight is worthy of being in the co-feature, but that’s me. I like seeing talented fighters in the co-feature, not guys that have lost repeatedly they’ve been given world title fights.