By Scot Gilfoid: IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua plans on fighting twice more in 2016. He beat Charles Martin by a 2nd round knockout this month in their fight on April 9. The victory proved little because it wasn’t against one of the more talented of the heavyweights in the division.
Joshua next plans on fighting on June 25 against one of three fringe contenders in Eric Molina, Dominic Breazeale or Bermane Stiverne. He then wants to fight against Tyson Fury in last 2016. I don’t know if that fight is going to happen under the ideal conditions, however. Fury will be fighting Wladimir Klitschko in a rematch on July 9, and the chances are that Fury loses that fight. Yeah, Joshua vs. Fury can take place, but it’ll likely only take place with Fury coming off of a knockout loss to Klitschko.
“I see the demand that people want to see me fight Tyson Fury at some stage, but I’ll do it one Fury at a time,” Joshua said via skysports.com. “But we’ll get the ball rolling, so whether he wins or loses and the demand is still there, I’d love to fight Tyson Fury some time.”
Unfortunately, I don’t see the demand being still there for a Joshua-Fury fight after Fury loses to Klitschko. Yeah, there will be some fans that will still be interested in seeing those two British heavyweights mix it up, but how do you ask the boxing public to pay to see a fight between Fury and Joshua with Fury coming off of a loss to Klitschko? I mean, I wouldn’t pay anything to ever see such a match-up.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn would need to count on the casual boxing fans being totally clueless about Fury’s loss to Klitschko, which is going to be kind of hard to do because that fight is going to get a lot of attention in July. I think Hearn and Joshua will need to bite the bullet and take the David Haye fight later this year rather than the Fury fight, which means here will be a very good chance that the slow as molasses Joshua suffers a knockout loss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=540BwkExT38
Instead of banking on a fight between Joshua and Fury for later this year, Hearn needs to focus on a more realistic opponent like Luis “The Real King Kong” Ortiz or David Haye. Those are pretty much the only guys Hearn can match against Joshua unless he wants to do something desperate like still going ahead with Joshua-Fury under less than ideal circumstances with Fury having been beaten in his last fight against Klitschko.