We kick off 2022 waiting and wishing for the marquee fights — the ones that can make boxing the focal point of the sports world, if only for a day, and the kind of fights that were in short supply in 2021.
The anticipated undisputed heavyweight championship bout between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua would have fit the bill last year — a global super fight planned for Aug. 14 in Saudi Arabia. But the arbitrator presiding over the Fury-Deontay Wilder dispute stood in the way, and instead, fans were treated to an instant classic in the trilogy battle between Fury and Wilder.
The sport — as we’ve come to expect — failed to deliver many of the obvious matchups that would bring the sport to prominence. Sure, we saw Canelo Alvarez claim all four major super middleweight titles in fights with Billy Joe Saunders and Caleb Plant in two very entertaining fights. But another year passed without a third meeting between Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin, the biggest commercially appealing fight on the table for boxing’s top star.
Oleksandr Usyk-Joshua and Fury-Wilder 3 were big-time fights last year, and Usyk and Joshua will fight again in 2022, but the end result is that we still don’t have an unquestioned king of the heavyweight division. On the bright side, we might be moving closer to the long-awaited welterweight title fight between champions Errol Spence Jr. and Terence Crawford following the expiration of Crawford’s Top Rank contract.
And there’s hope that we’ll finally see some of the stars in the talent-rich lightweight division actually fight each other, rather than just trading insults on social media.
Boxing has another chance in 2022 to right past wrongs by coalescing and bringing fans the matchups they deserve. Here are seven fights — with an actual chance of materializing — I want to see this year:
