By Adam Godfrey: Abel Sanchez, trainer of Gennady Golovkin, has expressed his view in a recent interview that the public are interested in paying to see Anthony Joshua fight and talk, but that Tyson Fury doesn’t elicit the same excitement or interest. Of Joshua, he points out that Joshua creates excitement in the viewing public and that both his Boxing style and general demeanour are conducive to garnering support. He also said that he considers Joshua to be one of the best Heavyweights in the world right now.
In contrast to his opinion of Joshua, Sanchez said of Tyson Fury that he has piled on too much weight to be attractive (assumedly both literally and figuratively) to the paying public, and that his public persona and utterances on social media are counter-productive to establishing and maintaining a loyal fan-base. He suggests that whereas Joshua stays true to his fans by delivering upon his word, Fury is seen as fickle and unreliable.
Tyson Fury has suffered a tumultuous 18 months since he beat Wladimir Klitschko to relieve the long-time champion of his IBF, IBO and WBC belts, as well as the lineal title. He vacated his belts before he could be stripped following a failed drugs test and has piled on pound after pound of excess weight during inactivity. He remains, by all accounts, suspended by the British Boxing Board of Control, who in May announced that they will await the results of a UKAD investigation into Fury’s drug issues before they will consider reinstating his license. Given the amount of weight he would have to lose and his out of the ring issues, it’ll be a surprise to see Fury back in the ring in 2017.
To the contrary, Anthony Joshua has seen his stock rise to meteoric levels. The IBF belt relinquished by Fury was inherited by American Charles Martin, and was then promptly snapped up by the Brit after he destroyed the newly crowned Heavyweight Paper Champion Martin in April of last year. He successfully defended his belt against Americans Dominic Breazeale and Eric Molina, before cementing his position as one of the biggest stars in Boxing today (with, arguably, only Canelo Alvarez and Manny Pacquaio able to match Joshua for star-power) following an enthralling battle of wills with Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley arena in London. Joshua stopped the former Champion in the 11th and the bout was swiftly labeled a modern classic.
Unfortunately for Fury his remarkable skills as a Boxer are often overshadowed by his penchant for unnecessary trash-talking and controversial views. He has been criticized for his opinions on subjects such as women, homosexuality and performance enhancing drugs, and his often bizarre antics before and after fights. It is quite conceivable that fight fans are, as Sanchez suggests, becoming a little bored of the charade and are losing patience with his seeming lack of commitment to a sport that has been good to him.
It also does not help Fury that his fight with Klitchko was as forgettable as Joshua’s was memorable. Fury did exactly what he needed to do to grind out the victory, but it was never pretty. The hardcore Boxing fan knows what an achievement it was to wrest the belts away from the Ukrainian in his backyard, but this is not necessarily projected to the unwashed masses who are perhaps less aware of the extent of Fury’s achievement. There will be natural comparisons between the way the men beat the Ukrainian, and very few would be willing to admit they preferred watching Fury’s performance over Joshua’s.
If Fury wants to get his career back on track he absolutely has to focus his mind on staying out of trouble, perhaps removing himself completely from the public eye until he gets close to a fighting weight to remove distraction. A Joshua v Fury clash is still a mouth-watering prospect with a distinct clash of styles. In this writer’s opinion Fury is the only Heavyweight who can currently hang with Joshua. As usual, I’ll eat my words if proven wrong, but there appears to be few challenges out there for the current Champion, with only Fury, Deontay Wilder, and perhaps the likes of Joshua Parker or Luis Ortiz ever mooted as men who could usurp the current King.
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