It might finally be sinking in for Team Anthony Joshua. The cocks of the walk, who boasted of having a billion dollar fighter on their hands?with more than a decade left of earning power?are coming to terms with the fact that their guy is no longer on that road to worldwide superstardom.
Although they?ll never cop to it, IBF/WBA/WBO champ Joshua being shipped off to fight at New York?s Madison Square Garden on June 1 is pure ass-saving desperation.
Joshua, the ?I don?t need America? UK king, was supposed to arrive in America as a conquering hero invading the land of Ali, Frazier, Tyson, and Holyfield. As it is now, however, he comes in as a niche curiosity in a niche sport, a three-belt heavyweight champ who is barely a blip on the American fight scene radar and whose DAZN debut in America against Alexander Povetkin last September reportedly drew execs-jump-out-the-tenth-story-window-on-to-a-hot-pretzel-cart-below numbers.
And now, to make matters worse, Joshua has been cut off from the fights he needs to become the star his people want him to be. With WBC champ Deontay Wilder refusing to bite at the $100 million multi-fight lure offered to him by broadcast partner DAZN and Tyson Fury signed up to a lucrative deal with Top Rank/ESPN, ?AJ? suddenly finds himself a star without any big, star-level fights available to him.
That?s why he?s coming to New York, at least a full year earlier than anticipated against best-of-the-rest-opposition Jarrell Miller. Team Joshua is buying time, generating cheap headlines with a novelty fight in the US to stay relevant while they work desperately on brainstorming some answers for the dearth of relevant star-building B-sides.
Cruiserweight king Oleksander Usyk, who is co-promoted by Joshua?s promoter Eddie Hearn, has somehow found himself set to be the WBO?s mandatory challenger for Joshua. Kubrat Pulev, if he can beat back the challenge of women?s rights attorney Gloria Allred for his whole ?forced kiss? situation, will be the IBF?s mandatory challenger for Joshua after that. But neither Usyk nor Pulev are going to move the needle much when it comes to advancing Joshua?s star.
Rumors of DAZN offering a ?60million ($78 million) three-fight deal to former consensus world champ Wladimir Klitschko would add credence to the theory that Team Joshua is somewhat near panic mode in pursuit of marketable, bankable opposition.
Klitschko, who hasn?t been in the ring since being stopped by Joshua in the eleventh round of their April 2017 bout and hasn?t won a fight since decisioning Bryant Jennings in April of 2015, would serve one of two purposes according to the rumors. He?d either be matched directly against Joshua in a revisiting of their 2017 Fight of the Year thriller or be used as big-money bait for Wilder by the sports streaming service in a follow-up effort to get their hands on ?The Bronze Bomber.?
In a recent interview, Hearn pegs Klitschko as, still, a top 5 heavyweight, despite the 43-year-old?s two years away from the ring spent deep in retirement.
And don?t doubt for a second that someone, somewhere on Team Joshua hasn?t thought about throwing big numbers at Vitali Klitschko or Lennox Lewis or, maybe, even casting a net to pull Mike Tyson away from his new legal marijuana ranch.
A year ago, it was a no-brainer that the world would be Anthony Joshua?s. The three years spent before that, grooming the boxing world to revere the man who would be king and embrace him as the crossover, breakthrough heavyweight star the sport has been needing for decades, look more and more like a heavy-handed overstatement in retrospect.
A shitty turn of business events and too much ego, too soon in dealing with negotiations have stunted Joshua?s growth. A borderline antagonistic attitude towards the US market hasn?t helped either.
And now we have what we have?a potential billion dollar fighter cut off from the legacy, star-making fights he should?ve had already. Rather than being the force that unites the sport, as he was portrayed to be, he?s the poster boy for not counting your chickens before they hatch.
