By Scott Gilfoid: British promoter Eddie Hearn plans on taking IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua over to the U.S next week to help attract interest in his April 29 fight against non-American Wladimir Klitschko at the Wembley Stadium in London, England.
Hearn hopes to drive interest from the American fans for a future fight between Joshua and WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder for a possible unification fight in late 2017. According to Hearn, the U.S boxing fans are starting to go crazy for Joshua. He thinks the fans in the States are really going wild about Joshua. Joshua is known by the hardcore boxing fans in the States, but he’s a complete unknown with the casual fans.
It’s still not clear which of the two cable networks in the U.S that will televise the Joshua-Klitschko fight. Joshua will have a press conference in the U.S on January 29 to push the Joshua-Klitschko fight. He’ll then fly back to the UK to start training camp in February. One press conference in the U.S isn’t going to do much to help attract interest in Joshua and his fight against Klitschko in America.
The problem is Wladimir isn’t popular in the U.S, so it’s the wrong opponent that Joshua is facing. A lot of Wladimir’s past fights were shown in the U.S, and he was never able to become a big star over there. You can argue that it was Wladimir’s style of fighting that kept him from becoming a star. He liked to clinch a lot, and he mostly played it safe in his fights by fighting in a technical manner. It didn’t help that Wladimir lost to Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewster. After those defeats, Wladmir wasn’t involved in an interesting fight until his fight against David Haye in 2011. We’re talking many years of non-interesting opponents that Wladimir fought before he finally faced Haye. We could see the same thing with Joshua. He’s yet to fight an interesting opponent since turning pro in 2013.
“Anything can happen, but I love the Deontay Wilder fight. The Americans are starting to go mad for Anthony Joshua,” said Hearn to skysports.com. “I would like him to fight Wilder. You never know what is going to happen in boxing. AJ and Klitschko could have a 10, 11, 12 round war, do you do that again, or fight Wilder? Do you fight the Haye-Bellew winner?”
I don’t think the Americans are “starting to go mad for Anthony Joshua.” In fact, I don’t think the Americans know who the guy is. Hearn probably doesn’t realize how big the U.S is, because the country has many interests, and boxing is not high on the list. Heck, even Wilder isn’t a big star in the U.S., and he’s been fighting there all along. It takes a long time to become a star in the U.S, and it also requires COMPETITIVE match-ups, and we haven’t seen any of those with Joshua. He’s been put in with a lot of no-hopers in terms of opposition. Having Joshua fight over-matched opposition like Eric Molina, Dominic Breazeale and Charles Martin might work to make him a star in the UK, but that doesn’t work in the U.S. You’ve got to have competitive match-ups that the boxing fans get excited about. They’re not going to turn Joshua into a star with him facing fodder opposition in fights that are piped into the U.S on delay. The fighters that are instantly popular are guys that have huge built in fan bases like Saul Canelo Alvarez. There’s not a huge built in British population in the U.S to support Joshua right now. As such, Joshua needs to build a fan base by fighting and beating talented heavyweights, not guys that are picked out from the bottom of the rankings by Hearn for him to fight.
We’ve seen Joshua matched in his last two fights against fringe contenders in Dominic Breazeale and Eric Molina. Those were low ranked contenders. Instead of Hearn matching Joshua against highly ranked fighters, he put him in with low ranked guys. There was no drama involved in any of those fights. The boxing fans saw those as mismatches for Joshua, and rightly so. Those guys were picked from the bottom. If Hearn is just going to match Joshua against a lot of bottom feeders in the heavyweight division, then I don’t see how he can ever become a big name in the States. Vitali Klitschko became popular in the States after he fought Lennox Lewis. Klitschko took a chance, and he was only his way to beating Lewis until he suffered a cut.
“Wilder against Joshua can be built into a huge fight,” said Hearn. “[It’s] Two undefeated, fast, big-punching heavyweights.”
Oh brother, Hearn is really working hard to try and make the Joshua vs. Klitschko fight appear to be a competitive one. It’s obvious to the boxing world that this fight is nothing more than another mismatch involving Joshua. I think it might be and worse mismatch than Joshua’s last fight against Eric Molina, because Wladimir doesn’t look capable of throwing any punches at this point in his career.
If you saw how old and over-the-hill Wladimir looked in his last fight against Tyson Fury, you’ll have a pretty good idea what a mismatch the Joshua-Klitschko fight is. The thing is the 41-year-old Wladimir hasn’t fought since his loss to Fury. Wladimir will be even older than he was then, and he’s not going to be better. With a near two-year layoff, Wladimir SHOULD have taken a tune-up to get ready for the Joshua fight or for any important fight. But the fact that Wladimir is going straight into a title fight against Joshua after such a long time off from boxing, it gives me the feeling that this is just a retirement payday fight for the Ukrainian fighter.
You don’t see too many top fighters in boxing coming off of a long layoff to go straight into a title fight. It’s just not common. When you do see that kind of thing, it’s guys that appear to be cashing out for one last payday before retirement. They come back and get beaten and then disappear. I hate to say it, but that’s what I see with the Joshua vs. Klitschko fight. This is a mismatch involving a young heavyweight facing a very old one.