Eddie Hearn has spoken of how a fight between the wizened, coddled, well maneuvered British heavyweights Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua is the “biggest fight in commercial boxing”.
Fans outside the UK would much rather see a real fight where Canelo Alvarez fights Terence Crawford, David Benavidez, Artur Beterbiev or Dmitry Bivol. These are real fights involving fighters who are still relatively close to their prime.
ESPN’s Mike Coppinger believes Canelo-Crawford is a bigger fight than Fury-Joshua. The fight looks to be doing 1 million PPV buys in the US alone, which it might do. It will definitely produce bigger numbers than a Joshua vs. Fury fight on PPV from the US side. It’s still not the biggest fight Canelo would make. A fight between him and David Benavidez would be much bigger than one involving Crawford, but he doesn’t want to fight the ‘Mexican Monster’.
So, Crawford is the best we can get right now, and that fight is still bigger than one involving ‘The Gypsy King’ and AJ. Both guys just lost. Daniel Dubois knocked out Joshua, and Fury was beaten twice in a row by Oleksandr Usyk. Under those unfortunate circumstances, how are promoters like Hearn trying to smuggle a fight between Fury and Joshua onto PPV, touting it as the “biggest fight in boxing.”
Selling a Dud
People know what Fury-Joshua is about—for them and the promoters. Trying to sell a fight between Joshua and Fury at this late stage of their careers is not going to work outside the UK.
The British will probably go for it. They will probably want to watch it in high numbers and will pay anything to see their old heroes trot out again in their golden years. Fans in the US will NOT be interested, especially if the underdog is loaded with domestic scrubs like the Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk 2 card and the Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois Events.
“Canelo-Crawford is much bigger commercially. Miles bigger. It will easily eclipse 1 million US PPV buys at $80 (or thereabouts) and will pull in a gate above $20 million. Sorry, @EddieHearn,” Mike Coppinger said X.
Joshua-Fury would have been good a decade ago, but even then it wouldn’t have been big outside of the UK. None of these heavyweights have fought top-tier opposition throughout their careers. Part of the problem is that AJ and Fury fought during a weak era of heavyweights.
So, they could feast on fighters like Deontay Wilder, the 40-year-old Wladimir Klitschko, Alexander Povetkin and Kubrat Pulev. When some good fighters eventually emerged, like Martin Bakole, they wanted nothing to do with him.
