Anthony Joshua vs. Zhang Zhilei possible for future fight in China

By Boxing News - 05/02/2016 - Comments

anthny josuhua (7)By Scott Gilfoid: Promoter Barry Hearn is interested in having unbeaten IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (16-0, 16 KOs) defend his title in China in the future in the huge 91,000 seat Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing against possibly 2008 Olympic Silver medalist from China Zhang Zhilei (8-0, 5 KOs).

Joshua, 26, defeated The 6’6” southpaw Zhang by a 15-11 score in the 2012 London Olympics in a very close fight. However, it wasn’t as close as Joshua’s other controversial decision victories in that Olympics against Erislandy Savon of Cuba, Ivan Dychko of Kazakhstan, and Roberto Cammarelle from Italy.

Joshua’s promoters at Matchroom Sport hope to turn him into a global star by having him fight in China, and elsewhere. They’re currently working on putting together a television deal to have Joshua’s fights televised in the United States. There’s talk of Joshua possibly signing with Showtime in the U.S to have his fights shown there.

Last month, Joshua won the IBF heavyweight title in beating champion Charles Martin by a 2nd round knockout at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Joshua is now scheduled to fight another American in Dominic Breazeale on June 25 at the O2. Breazeale is a fringe contender rather than a highly ranked fighter, but fighting him might help turn Joshua into a bigger name in the States.

You would have to agree that Joshua is facing an uphill climb in becoming a big name in the U.S, because it requires quality opponents in competitive fights for fighters to become stars in the U.S, and we’re not seeing Joshua fight big names unfortunately. You can’t say that Zhang Zhilei is a big name in America at this time, so you would have to believe that Joshua might never achieve stardom in the U.S.

“When you plan someone’s career like Joshua you tend to plan in advance and I think we’re two years away from saying we can sell out the Bird’s Nest in China,” said Joshua’s promoter Barry Hearn to skysports.com. “I think Joshua’s going to be a global figure, and therefore I’ve got to give him a global platform. I was in Shanghai last week and we were talking. As soon as you show people pictures of Joshua knocking someone out, they get excited.”

I don’t think Hearn realizes what kind of commitment it takes for a fighter to become a star in a foreign country. You can’t just go there and fight once and then hope to become a big name. That’s not going to happen. Look at Gennady Golovkin. He’s been fighting in the States consistently for the past four years, and he’s only now starting to pick up a lot of fans. If Golovkin was fighting just once in the U.S against a big stiff, I think it would be a fail.

Further, having Joshua fight over-matched fringe contenders like Dominic Breazeale in fights televised in the U.S likely won’t do much either. Like I said, Joshua needs to fight quality and he needs to be fighting in the U.S or China over a number years. If Hearn wants to stick Joshua in China for the next four to five years, then yeah, he might become a big name over there, then again, he might not. It all depends.

I don’t think that’s what Hearn has in mind. I see him putting Joshua in China once against Zhang and that’ll be it. I see that as a very, very superficial approach to try and turn Joshua into a global star.

I think Hearn is going to find out that you can’t turn someone a star in a foreign country without them fighting their on a regular basis, learning the language like Golovkin has done in the U.S, and actually living there in that country. I’m not holding my breath waiting for Joshua to move to China and learn Chinese. I just don’t see that happening. You can’t shove a foreign fighter like Joshua down the throats of fans from another country if they’re not going to live in that country and especially if they’re not fighting quality guys in competitive match-ups. Fighting Breazeale and other over-matched fighters isn’t going to get the job done. Joshua needs to start taking on the best like Deontay Wilder, Joseph Parker, Carlos Takam and Luis “The Real King Kong” Ortiz, and he needs to move to whatever foreign country they want to turn him a star in.

“He’s a heavyweight who is almost 7ft tall and we could do it with a pay-per-view audience of tens of millions of Chinese people watching it,” added Hearn.

Zhang is 6’6”, and is the same height as Joshua. Zhang is a long ways away from 7-foot, I’m afraid. As far as opening China up for PPV, I don’t know about that either. If it were possible, I think Top Rank would have done it already with Manny Pacquiao and two-time Chinese Olympian Zou Shiming’s fights.