April 1 - Anthony Joshua vs Jermaine Franklin @02 (no PPV)

I sense he has a real struggle getting guys to fight him. Is it because he offers a 95/5 split in his favour? Must be...

You'd think any up and coming heavy or someone with a half decent record would chomp at the bit to fight him. All you have to do is box him to round 6 and it's downhill from there as he's gassed.

 

He's created a rod for his own back. If you are only going to fight once every six to nine months, then you have to continue fighting top opposition. If he wants to take tune up fights like Franklin then DAZN should have released a roadmap of fight dates, e.g. April, July, December. Think there would be some leeway given there.

Then again, I can't be too critical. He isn't champion anymore and is coming off two losses. What about the rest of the division? Joyce is making fights fans want to see, and... that is about it:

• Wilder v Ruiz Jr. has completely stalled.
• Fury v Usyk has completely stalled.
• There is Joyce v Zhang in April, we can look forward to that.
• What are the rest of the top 15 doing? Nothing much.

4 months (so far) of not a single fight to write home about in the heavyweight division. Think the most notable fights were a prospect versus a journeyman (Anderson v Forrest) and a fixed fight (Dubois v Lerena). Then there is the man of the division: Tyson Fury who last had a real fight in April (which turned out to be easy work); he then had a testimonial for his mate; but instead of getting Undisputed over the line is now looking at another exhibition, against Ngannou... Depressing stuff.

I guess Joshua really was carrying the division.

 

Wilder and Fury did not want this fight Koogs, make no mistake! Do you understand what I’m saying to you?

 

Depressingly accurate, what has happened to Wilder vs Ruiz, I thought that was as good as announced?

AJ is obviously fighting 3 times this year so no need to worry about him! LOL

Dubois has had his operation, I think they've said april/may for him.

 

PBC struggling to get the money together. Wilders last PPV bombed and Ruiz has never carried a successful one. Both guys apparently wanted $10m guarantees. Which means it needs 400k buys and will not do that number.

On top of that no guarantee currently if Showtime will even be a platform going forward. If so PBC are in a very sticky situation.

 

The fact both AJ and Joyce are fighting Franklin and zhang next instead of whyte and hrgovic just shows you what state the heavyweight division is in

 

PBC are on borrowed time. They have really shot themselves in the foot time and time again. Now they have a load of fighters who expect 7 figures but they can't afford to get out on even a semi regular basis.

 

Joshua seems to have no hunger to fight, compete which says a lot I think, he has made the money he could only dream of and the passion and need to box has disappeared, also he seems a bit mentally fragile and almost scared of losing to a degree.

Before he would've jumped at making 500k/mil a fight, now that is pocket change to him

 

The best thing that Hearn could do is to put this fight on the same card as another big Heavyweight fight in Wilder/Ruiz.
All English speaking and plenty of trash talk back and forwards in the pressers.

Billed up as the winners facing one another. Sells big and is a proper big fight night.

 

Don't you see how many fans here see Zhang as some serious obstacle?

 

Honestly if he's going back to fight this level of opponent again he may as well pack it in.

 

Don't really understand where joshua is at the minute,fair enough he lost to usyk no shame in that,but since then nothing
Not jumping on the bandwagon but it's almost like he's mentally shot and can't get in with a 'live' opponent
At his age he can't be fighting once a year,and expect to make any headway or improvements

 

It's the nonsense about having to develop and learn.

People around him are talking like a 12 fight Pro with 20 Amateur fights

 

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No sign of PPV on that poster…

 

Exactly mate,he's been a pro 10 years,not like he's a 2 fight novice saying he needs to learn his trade