By Craig Daly: Promoter Eddie Hearn thinks Anthony Joshua would agree to fight Francis Ngannou if he came to him if there’s a possibility for it to happen.
Joshua (26-3, 23 KOs) could still fight on December 23rd against Agit Kabayel, Otto Wallin or Filip Hrgovic. However, a fight with Ngannou would be massive, and it would be too big for Joshua to pass up.
AJ doesn’t need another tune-up fight after his two run-out wins this year against Jermaine Franklin and Robert Helenius.
Fighting Wallin, Kabayel, or Hrgovic would be pointless for Joshua because he can make much more money against Ngannou and then face Deontay Wilder & the Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk winner.
Hearn is sure in his mind that the former two-time heavyweight world champion Joshua will defeat Ngannou without any issues.
It’s questionable whether AJ could hold up under the bombardment that he would take in a fight with the powerful Ngannou, and it ends badly for him if his chin betrays him as it did against Andy Ruiz Jr. in 2019.
Ngannou’s popularity sky-high
“He’s going to get a lot of criticism, and he doesn’t take the criticism well. He bans media outlets, he wouldn’t come to the press conference after the fight, and people talking about this fight in February. I’m not so sure,” said Eddie Hearn to Fight Hub TV about his doubts whether Tyson Fury will face Oleksandr Usyk in February.
“Signed? Not if you retire from boxing, it’s not,” said Hearn when told that the Fury vs. Usyk fight is signed. “For him [Fury] to take this fight in February, he’s going to have to go back into camp in four weeks.”
Fury surely won’t retire before he scoops up the mega-payday the Saudis will be given to him to fight IBF/WBA/WBO champion Oleksandr Usyk in February.
Even if Fury is scared out of his wits at the prospect of sharing the ring with Usyk, the estimated $50 million he’ll receive from the Saudis will help him overcome his fear.
That said, Fury is difficult to predict, and he might do something weird by not going through with it and retiring like he did after his win over Wladimir Klitschko in 2015 rather than giving him a rematch.
“Mentally, is he ready for that after the criticism he’s going to have to face? I don’t know. It’s a fast turnaround. That’s true,” said Hearn when told that the $50 million that Fury is expected to get for the fight with Usyk could motivate him to return to the gym to begin training for the fight.
“A lot of people have been saying that Fury let down boxing. If you’re going to be a part of those kind of fights and those kind of events, if it goes wrong, you’ve got to understand that it kills your legacy forever.
“You got to understand that Fury’s legacy is you lost to a guy that has never boxed before. He is a generational great. Can he be a true generational great with the likes of Ali, and Louis? Right now, absolutely not,” said Hearn.
No one is placing Fury among the greats like Muhammad Ali, Joe Lous, or Jack Dempsey. Even before Fury’s poor showing against Ngannou, it was mainly the casual boxing fans or people with scant knowledge about the sport’s history that were talking about Tyson as an all-time great.
If you’ve seen heavyweights from the past, you’d know that Fury didn’t belong in the top 100, let alone in the top 5 of the all-time greats.
“If he goes and beats Usyk, maybe, but he’s still got that night [that Fury lost to Ngannou], and that’s probably the night that people talk about forever,” said Hearn. “It’s pretty embarrassing, but if you play those games, you’ve got to take everything that comes with it.
“I’m sure he’ll be crying in the 20 or 30 million that he made on Saturday night, but it is what it is. I don’t think it’s bad for boxing, but I think the casuals are thinking, ‘What’s going on there? This is mad. So can I get in the ring and have a go and beat him?'”
The massive $20-30 million that Fury made for his fight with Ngannou last weekend is probably going a long way to help cushion his wounded ego. That’s a lot of dough to get for a fight against a novice, and it’s difficult to understand why the Saudis were willing to pay Fury so much money for this kind of fight, especially since he’s not the best heavyweight in the division.
Fury is just an older guy with a weight problem who has fought only a couple of good fighters in his career and got lucky in those bouts, dodging knockout defeats.
“Probably yeah,” said Hearn when asked if he would favor Usyk to defeat Fury now. “I always favored Fury in that fight, but only marginally. Usyk is not a big puncher. So, I think that’s good news for Fury, but we don’t know what this is going to do to his confidence.”
Fury can possibly beat Usyk with generous scoring if the judges favor his jabs over the pinpoint shots from Oleksandr. This isn’t going to be one of those fights where Fury can grab Usyk in a bearhug repeatedly and lean on him to tire his legs out like he did against Deontay Wilder, Dillian Whyte, and Dereck Chisora. Usyk won’t stand still to allow Fury to grab him, so that style taught to him by SugarHill Steward will be useless.
“He might come back stronger. He’s proved me wrong before, but I think Usyk’s confidence after Saturday will go through the roof. Sitting there watching it at ringside, he’ll be thinking, ‘I’ve got the absolute beating of you,’ and I think Usyk starts up as a slight favorite,” said Hearn.
Joshua beating Francis will revitalize his career
“Just a couple of messages from myself and the teams, saying, ‘Look if you want to consider it,'” said Hearn when asked if he’s reached out to Francis Ngannou’s management for a fight between him and Anthony Joshua next. “We know financially, it’s huge.”
It would be a good idea for Hearn to speak with Joshua to ask him point blank about whether he wants to fight Ngannou, because he needs to act quickly before he signs to fight someone like Deontay Wilder. When you snooze, you lose.
“I’ve not discussed it with AJ, but if I could make that fight for a lot of money, my recommendation for Anthony Joshua would be to take the fight,” said Hearn. “I don’t see that as a tough fight for the money that would be involved in the fight.
“I think it puts him in a great position, stopping and beating Ngannou well after he just had that fight with Fury. AJ’s desire is to fight and win the world heavyweight championship again, but like I said, if that fight materialism, I’d definitely advise him to take it.
“Not about that fight, no,” said Hearn if Joshua spoke to him about the Ngannou clash. “He’s just not like that. He’d never be the one to phone me up and say, ‘Oh, my God, have you seen Fury?’ He just keeps to himself. I’m sure he watched it and caught up with it and was in disbelief as well.
“He’s never been a guy that phones me and says, ‘Make that fight, give me that fight.’ He’s like, ‘Let me know what you think best for me. Speak to 258 and my team, and cool, I’ll fight anyone.’
“If I went to him and said, ‘This is the offer on the table. I think you should fight Ngannou, I’m sure he’d do it. Yeah, he’s [Joshua] in camp now. He’d like to fight on December 23rd. Whether that’s possible, I’m not sure. If not, it’ll be early mid-January.
“Seven weeks on Saturday for December 23. It’s pretty tight. I think it’s more likely to go in January. A lot depends on the Ngannou conversations and the Wilder situation, but it would be a guy from the top 15. Whether that’s Hrgovic or Wallen or Kabayel, just someone competitive.
“He wanted activity, he wanted to fight three times in a year. So, he’s been nice and active, and he’s been joying it,” said Hearn about Joshua. “We’ve all been unlucky because we had an offer from Saudi Arabia, which we all accepted, but they didn’t come through with it,” said Hearn about the Joshua vs. Wilder fight that never happened.
“We probably put all our eggs in one basket, and maybe we shouldn’t have. We’ve done deals with them before and expected it to go through. It didn’t. Now we started looking at March or April, and there are a lot of sites we could go with that fight [Joshua-Wilder].
“America, Wembley, we’ve had a couple of conversations in the Middle East. I’m sure Saudi Arabia would look at that fight again. So that has been the frustration, but still, the focus has been to make that fight.
“If the offer was the same, we’d do that fight,” said Hearn when asked if he’d be interested in doing the Joshua vs. Wilder fight on the undercard of Fury vs. Usyk.
