Eddie Hearn has been banging on about how a fight between the faded, pampered, well-maneuvered British heavyweights Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua is the “biggest fight in boxing commercially.”
Fans outside the UK would much rather see a real fight involving Canelo Alvarez fighting Terence Crawford, David Benavidez, Artur Beterbiev, or Dmitry Bivol. Those are real fights involving fighters still relatively close to their primes.
Mike Coppinger of ESPN believes Canelo-Crawford is a bigger fight than Fury-Joshua. He seems the fight doing 1 million PPV buys in the U.S alone, which it might do. It would certainly do bigger numbers than a Joshua vs. Fury fight on PPV from the U.S. side. It’s still not the biggest fight that Canelo would make. A match between him and David Benavidez would be far bigger than one involving Crawford, but he doesn’t want to fight the ‘Mexican Monster.’
So, Crawford is the best that we can get right now, and that fight is still bigger than one involving ‘The Gypsy King’ and AJ. Both of those guys just lost. Daniel Dubois knocked out Joshua, and Fury was beaten twice in a row by Oleksandr Usyk. Under those sorry conditions, how do promoters like Hearn try to peddle a fight between Fury & Joshua on PPV, touting it as the “biggest fight in boxing.”
Selling A Dud
People know what Fury-Joshua is about—money for them and the promoters. Trying to sell a fight between Joshua and Fury now at this late stage of their careers isn’t going to work outside of the UK.
The Brits will probably go for it. They’ll probably want to watch it in high numbers and would pay anything to see their old heroes trotted out once again in their golden years. Fans in the U.S. will NOT be interested, especially if the underdog is loaded with domestic-level 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 PPV buys in the U.S. at $80 (or around there) and will pull in a gate above $20 million. Sorry, @EddieHearn,” said Mike Coppinger on X.
Joshua-Fury would have been good a decade ago, but even then, it wouldn’t be big outside of the UK. Neither of these heavyweights was fighting the cutting-edge opposition throughout their careers. Part of the problem is that AJ and Fury fought during a weak era of heavyweights.
So, they were able to feast off of fighters like Deontay Wilder, 40-year-old Wladimir Klitschko, Alexander Povetkin, and Kubrat Pulev. When some good fighters finally emerged, like Martin Bakole, they wanted nothing to do with him.