By Charles Brun: Anthony Joshua will be facing unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk in a rematch on August 20th on Sky Sports Box Office in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia instead of DAZN in the UK.
The Daily Mail is reporting that Sky Sports has outbid DAZN with a £28m, so they’ll be the ones that televised the Joshua-Usyk 2 rematch.
Joshua recently signed a five-year £100 million deal with DAZN, which is an absurd amount of money, considering that he’s lost 2 out of his last four fights since 2019.
The worst part is that the streaming giant won’t show Joshua’s critical rematch with Usyk. What happens if Joshua loses that fight? What’s the point in keeping Joshua after that?
If Joshua loses to Usyk again, what’s the point in DAZN keeping Joshua around for the next five years?
It would be a waste of time for them to pay Joshua huge money because he’ll likely continue to lose unless his promoter Eddie Hearn matches him against non-elite level fighters like he’d done earlier in his career when things were still going swimmingly.
For Joshua to be getting that kind of money to fight on DAZN for the next five years after losing half of his last four fights, you got to wonder if the streaming giant made a mistake.
If Joshua loses the fight to Usyk, DAZN will have devalued the fighter to show on their streaming service, and they will have missed out on arguably the most important fight of his career.
A loss for Joshua on August 20th would be his third in his last five fights, and he would then return to DAZN to begin fighting on their network. If you’re DAZN, you probably won’t be too happy with getting Joshua back under those conditions.
The question is, did DAZN include an escape route to dump Joshua if his career continues to go downhill?
If so, it might be a good idea to dump him overboard right away if he loses to Usyk on August 20th because there’s no point in keeping him on board.
You got to have Joshua walk the plank if loses to Usyk because his value will drop off the side of a cliff after that defeat.
The only fans that would be interested in subscribing to DAZN to watch Joshua after that loss would be casuals that don’t follow the sport closely.
DAZN probably won’t bring in a ton of new subscribers each time Joshua fights if he gets wiped out by Usyk in the rematch.
“Sky Sports have edged out their rivals to show Joshua’s attempt at recapturing the world heavyweight titles he lost last year, with a bid worth around £28million,” said Kieran Lynch at the Daily Mail.
Joshua and his Ukrainian opponent Usyk are expected to share a purse of at least £100million.
‘This fight is outside of the DAZN deal, the long-term DAZN deal, because the rights are owned by the site effectively, so that’ll be negotiated separately,” said Eddie Hearn about Joshua.
