By Craig Daly: Eddie Hearn says the choice of Jermaine Franklin as the April 1st opponent for Anthony Joshua was done by AJ’s new training team, who liked what they saw of the American fighter in his recent questionable decision loss to Dillian Whyte last November.
Hearn said that when he mentioned Zhilei Zhang as a potential option for Joshuja’s April 1st fight, he was widely criticized, so he didn’t go down that road.
What Hearn finds interesting is that Joe Joyce isn’t being dumped on in the same way now that he’s fighting the 39-year-old Zhang on April 15th.
Joshua (24-3, 22 KOs) has lost his last two fights against Oleksandr Usyk, which is another reason why it was important for his team to select Franklin rather than a dangerous heavyweight like Joyce or Deontay Wilder.
British boxing fans wanted to see Joshua fight Dillian Whyte, but Hearn has set that match-up aside for the summer in a stadium. He wants that to be a big fight, even though Whyte would be a slight step down in terms of talent from the Franklin fight.
Whyte is still popular in the same way journeyman Derek Chisora is still a guy that British fans want to see even though he’s seven or eight years past his prime.
“I think it’s a great fight for AJ. Jermaine did great against Dillian Whyte. It was a very, very close fight. Some people had Franklin winning that fight. I had Dillian edging that fight. I thought it was very competitive,” said Eddie Hearn to iFL TV when asked why he chose Jermaine Franklin as the opponent for Anthony Joshua on April 1st.
You got to wonder whether Hearn is saying that he had Whyte winning against Franklin because he promotes him. Virtually the whole world had Franklin beating Whyte, and it doesn’t make sense for Hearn to be out on the margins with his lone opinion that Dillian deserved the victory.
“I think some of the criticism of Joshua will be, ‘What does he have left?’ He’s coming off two defeats,” said Hearn. “We saw mentally the last defeat [against Oleksandr Usyk] was very tough for him. Jermaine Franklin is coming in full of beans, and he already looks ten pounds lighter and a lot more confident. We’ll see what Anthony Joshua has left in the heavyweight division on April 1st.
“I feel like it’s going to be a great fight, and I’m expecting a great performance from AJ. I’m excited to start the last big phase of his career. I don’t know if it’s five, six, seven fights, whatever it is, but this fight might be the most important of his career.
“Just because we’re looking to do that in a big stadium in the summer,” said Hearn when asked why he chose Franklin over Dillian Whyte on April 1st. “I think this model the first time as well. We’re looking to at the O2 Arena coming in for the first fight on DAZN.
“I don’t have a problem with Dillian Whyte, but the training team looked at Jermaine Franklin; they like that fight, and that’s the guy we chose. You can’t really win. When Zhilei Zhang was mentioned, there was an uproar about an Anthony Joshua opponent.
“‘This guy is really old. What a joke, opponent. Now he’s fighting Joe Joyce in the fight of the century. I didn’t mind him [Zhang] as an AJ opponent, but the criticism when he was even mentioned was that it was a terrible fight. Those same people feel that Joe Joyce is better than Anthony Joshua and say that Zhang is a tremendous fight.
“So AJ is always going to be on the back of strange criticism,” said Hearn.
