By Tim Royner: Anthony Joshua is pulling for WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder to defeat Tyson Fury next Saturday night in their fight on Showtime pay-per-view at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.
Joshua (22-0, 21 KOs) admits that he ultimately wants to face both fighters, but if Fury wins, it means he’ll have to wait longer to get a chance at facing the winner due to the rematch clause Wilder has in the contract. Wilder and Fury (27-0, 19 KOs) will end up facing each other in a second fight while Joshua sits on the sidelines waiting for his turn to face one of them.
“I need Wilder to win. If Fury wins, Wilder gets a rematch so it messes up the plans a bit,” Joshua said according to @LandRover #HelloEvoque] via @michaelBensonn. “Wilder for me. He will win.”
Joshua’s prediction of a Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) win over the 30-year-old Fury could prove to be the case. Wilder is fighting at a high level right now with a recent win over Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz. Fury is coming off of lackluster 10 round points win over former two-time heavyweight world title challenger Francesco Pianeta last August. Fury has had only two fights since 2015, and he’s lost a tremendous amount of weight.
Fury started training for his comeback fight earlier this year at 390 pounds, and he’s now looking like he’s below 250 lbs. That’s an absurd amount of weight to lose for any person. Fury is about to take a world class athlete in Deontay Wilder. The weight loss alone will very likely sink Fury’s ship against Wilder. But when you factor in that Wilder has the busier guy with his career, and has the natural hand speed and power advantage, it’s going to be awfully tough for Fury to hang with the 6’7″ Wilder for any length of time. What made the 6’9″ Fury such a good fighter in the past was his height, reach, mobility, and awkwardness. Against Wilder, Fury’s height and reach will be negated for the most part by Wilder. Fury will still have a little height and reach advantage, but nowhere near what he’s been accustomed to having in his fights. For a tall fighter, Fury gives up his height and reach easily, Rather than fighting on the outside Fury tends to fight at medium to close range. He’s been able to do that due to most of his opposition not being big punchers. Wladimir Klitschko was the exception to the rule when it comes to the type of opposition Fury has been facing during his career.
Interestingly enough, Joshua says he won’t be taking the time out of his life to stay up late to watch the Wilder vs. Fury fight.
“The fight is on too early in the morning for me, so I’ll be sleeping,” Joshua said.
Joshua’s stance on his ambivalance towards watching the Wilder-Fury fight gives the impression that he’s not motivated to face either. He doesn’t sound like a fighter who wants to face either of those guys. This furthers the impression that boxing fans have that Joshua is running from Wilder. Joshua will probably face Wilder at some point, but it may take place years in the future in the same way that we saw with the Saul Canelo Alvarez and Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao. Golovkin wanted to fight Canelo when he was 32-years-old. GGG ended up having to wait until he was 35 before the fight finally took place. The boxing public had to wait six years before Mayweather finally fought Pacquiao in 2015. By that point, both fighters were in their late 30s, and no longer in their primes. Pacquiao had a bad shoulder, and Mayweather looked lazy throughout the dull 12 round fight.
Joshua talks like he wants to fight Wilder, but his and his promoter Eddie Hearn’s actions suggest otherwise. The money that they’ve been offering Wilder hasn’t been nearly enough to get the 2008 Olympic bronze medalist to agree to take the fight. Hearn has been offering Wilder only flat fees, and has been talking about 2-fight deals. There’s little chance of even one fight taking place between them given Hearn’s insistence on getting Wilder to agree to a flat fee. Flat fees are a good negotiating strategy when a popular fighter is facing a mere contender, but that’s not the case with Wilder. He’s an unbeaten world champion, and he holds arguably the most prestigious heavyweight title with his World Boxing Council belt. Joshua’s IBF, WBA and WBO titles are considered lesser belts in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans. Those aren’t trinket titles necessarily, but they don’t have the same prestige behind them that the WBC belt has for a lot of fans.
“I’ll fight them both on the same night. We’ll end up fighting them both,” Joshua said about Fury and Wilder. We’re the same generation. Same time. Same career. The fans will demand it. I’d be willing to fight both.”
With the ham-handed manner that Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn has gone about attempting to negotiate a fight against Wilder, it might be better for him AJ to look for another promoter that is a little more tight-lipped, and even keeled when it comes to negotiations. Hearn has said a lot of things in devaluing Wilder’s worth in the negotiation process, and it’s caused him to dig his heels into the sand to harden his stance in the negotiations. Hearn saying that he only feels that Wilder is worth an 80-20 to 70-30 split depending on the PPV buys generated for the Wilder-Fury fight, it’s an off-putting thing to say. Wilder hearing those comments has only made him even more determined to stick it out until the bitter end for his 50% cut of the revenue for the Joshua fight. Eventually, Hearn will have to give in if Joshua gets knocked out by someone. Joshua is doing well right now beating the guys that Hearn has been lining up for him, but he’s had some close calls and shown some major chinks in his armor that show that he’s going to get beaten sooner or later by a contender that the boxing fans least suspect of beating him.
“If I was the undisputed heavyweight champion, I would want to fight Usyk because he is the undisputed cruiserweight champion,” Joshua said. “It would be a legacy fight.”
Usyk is currently the IBF/WBA/WBC/WBO cruiserweight champion, and he’s also promoted by Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing USA company. Joshua vs. Usyk is a no-brainer. It’s going to happen soon once Usyk moves up in weight to heavyweight, and gets two or three fights under his belt. However, Joshua vs. Usyk is not going to be much of a legacy fight. Usyk looked beatable in three of his recent fights against Tony Bellew, Mairis Briedis and Michael Hunter. Usyk is unquestionably a product of hype from boxing fans that want him to be considered a great fighter, but in reality he’s not. Usyk is less of a fighter than Evander Holyfield was when he moved up from cruiserweight to fight at heavyweight. Holyfield was a dominating cruiserweght, and clearly best of all time. Usyk is more of a shaky cruiserweight champion, who would have lost to Briedis if the Latvian fighter had paced himself more. Joshua isn’t going to improve his legacy by beating Usyk. The only thing he’s going to prove is he can beat a good cruiserweight, but not a great one. For Joshua to improve his legacy, he’s got to insist that Hearn match him against Wilder and Luis Ortiz. Those are the two heavyweights that it appears that Hearn has been avoiding in matching them against Joshua. If Joshua can beat Wilder and Ortiz, and then clean up the division in the real sense by defeating Adam Kownawki, Jarrell Miller, Dillian Whyte, Kubrat Pulev, Usyk and Dominic Breazeale, then he’ll be seen as having a solid legacy.
Usyk is going to need to beat some very good fighters at heavyweight for his fight against Joshua to be viewed as a sound fight and not just a cash out level fight on the part of the 2012 Olympic gold medalist from Ukraine. The general belief is that Usyk is going to take two soft fights at heavyweight, and then face Joshua for his IBF/WBA/WBO titles. The fight will have cash out written all over it. If Usyk retires immediately after losing to Joshua, it won’t be surprising, because he’ll have nowhere to go but back down to cruiserweight after he gets beaten by AJ. Usyk is probably not going to want to go back down to cruiserweight. The paydays are small down at cruiserweight in comparison, and he’ll be spoiled after tasting the nice money he got for the Joshua and Bellew fights.