By Scott Gilfoid: With IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) saying this week that he’ll be ending his boxing career after his next fight against Wladimir Klitschko on July 9, it looks like IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (16-0, 16 KOs) and his promoter Eddie Hearn won’t be getting the unification fight against Fury.
Hearn has been talking about wanting to match Joshua against Fury in November in what would be a big fight fit for a stadium. However, Fury says he’ll be hanging up his gloves after the rematch with Klitschko in two months from now at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK.
“It can’t be topped. So basically, I’m just doing this fight to get a few quid in. That’s it. I won’t be boxing again,” said Fury to IFL TV. “I’m never going back to the gym again. Look how fat my dad is. Look how fat all my brothers are. That’s how I’m gonna be after this next fight. Don’t ask me to do any more interviews. Don’t ask me to do any [expletive]. After this next fight, there is no more boxing. I’ve got ten weeks left, and that’s it. Goodnight, goodbye forever.”
So there it is. No Fury fight for Joshua. What can you do if Fury isn’t motivated enough to take the fight? Looks like Joshua’s promoter Hearn will need to have Joshua fight Dereck Chisora if he needs a domestic level opponent for Joshua. Unfortunately, Chisora isn’t popular like Fury, so it’s going to be a tough ask on Hearn’s part to ask the British fans to pay their hard earned money to see Joshua trounce Chisora on PPV.
I think Fury is serious. He’s made lots of cash and he can sit back on his couch and watch television and eat pies for the remainder of his life without worries for the need of money. That’s good for Fury but obviously bad for the more ambitious Joshua and his promoter Hearn.
Joshua wanted the fight with Fury because it would help validate his career if he can take Fury’s pelt and add it to his collection. The heavily muscular Joshua’s recent win over little known Charles Martin wasn’t enough to do much for Joshua’s career. He needs a big name like Fury to show fans that he’s for real and not just a bodybuilder with a controversial gold medal victory from the 2012 Olympics and a win over a paper champion in Martin.
If Fury isn’t going to let Joshua get his chance to take the baton from him, then it’s going to hurt his career. Joshua needs this fight because without it, he may never turn into the star that some think he can be.
Fury is happy with just beating the aged Klitschko from their fight last November. Wladimir has been the best heavyweight in the planet for a number of years, and Fury was the one to knock him off his throne.
Fury is completely satisfied with that. A fight against Joshua, who is virtual upstart, doesn’t seem to be motivating Fury in the same way that a fight against Klitschko did. As such, Fury doesn’t seem to mind retiring without fighting Joshua because knocking off the better known Klitschko was the bigger deal. Joshua is still mostly known in the UK rather than worldwide. That’s why Fury’s win over Klitschko was a much bigger deal than anything he could accomplish by fighting Joshua and potentially beating him as well.
If Hearn is going to turn Joshua into a worldwide star, then he’s going to need to up the level of his opposition. Joshua is scheduled to defend his IBF title on June 25 against unbeaten fringe contender Dominic Breazeale (17-0, 15 KOs) at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Hearn thinks Breazeale is well known in the U.S., but that’s the farthest thing from the truth.
I would venture to guess that Breazeale is about as well known in the U.S as Fred Kassi is, because that’s pretty much when Breazeale started having his fights shown in the U.S. He hasn’t been getting televised for ages, and many Americans didn’t bother watching the boxing events from the 2012 Olympics, which is where Breazeale briefly was shown in losing his first match.
If Hearn wants to turn Joshua into a star, then he needs to put him in with WBC champion Deontay Wilder, interim WBA champion Luis “The Real King Kong” Ortiz, Carlos Takam and Joseph Parker. Those are pretty much the best fighters in the heavyweight division right now. But for some reason, we’re not hearing Hearn mention any of those names and you have to wonder why? I can understand it from Hearn’s point of view. He’s got a golden goose in Joshua with his gold medal from the 2012 London Olympics, and he can continue to scoop up the golden eggs that Joshua lays with the soft match-making he’s doing for him.
The British boxing fans don’t seem to mind that Hearn isn’t matching Joshua against guys that could potentially knock him out with single shots to the head in Deontay, Ortiz and Parker. I mean, Hearn is doing a good job by not putting Joshua in harm’s way by matching him against Deontay, Ortiz and Parker, but the thing of it is, unless he does match him against those fighters, he’s not going to become a major star.
You can’t have Joshua making a career out of fighting guys that arguably lost to Kassi in their last fights in Breazeale and paper champions that fail to throw punches.