Canelo – Crawford shows why Fury – Joshua is a joke

Eddie Hearn went on to talk about how a fight between faded, spoiled and well-handled British heavyweights Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua is the “biggest fight in boxing commercially”.

Fans outside of the UK would much rather see a real fight involving Canelo Alvarez against Terence Crawford, David Benavidez, Artur Beterbiev or Dmitry Bivol. Those are real fights involving fighters still relatively close to their prime.

ESPN’s Mike Coppinger believes Canelo-Crawford is a bigger fight than Fury-Joshua. It appears to be struggling to make 1 million PPV buys in the US alone, which could happen. It would definitely do bigger numbers than a Joshua vs. Fury fight on PPV by the United States. 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 as good as we can get right now, and that fight is even bigger than the 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 these unfortunate conditions, how do promoters like Hearn try to peddle a fight between Fury and Joshua on PPV, advertising it as the “biggest fight in boxing”.

Selling a disaster

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 in their careers won’t work outside of the UK.

The English will probably try. They’ll probably want to watch it in huge numbers and would pay anything to see their old heroes come out once again in their golden years. Fans in the US will NOT be interested, especially if the underdog is loaded with national-level kits like the Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk 2 and the events Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois.

“Canelo-Crawford is much bigger commercially. Bigger miles. It will easily surpass 1 million US PPV buys at $80 (or there) and surpass $20 million. Sorry, @EddieHearn,” Mike Coppinger said on X.

Joshua-Fury would have been good ten years ago, but even then it wouldn’t have been big outside of the UK. None of these heavyweights have fought cutting-edge opponents throughout their careers. Part of the problem is that AJ and Fury fought during a weak heavyweight era.

Thus, they were able to feast on fighters such as 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.