Which is a bigger shame, never seeing prime AJ vs prime Fury or prime AJ vs prime Wilder?

Clearly wilder vs joshua. It had the makings of a hagler vs hearns dynamic at heavy.

Since both had great offense and mediocre defense the only viable gameplans would have been to land first. A short heavyweight slugfest with multiple close calls in the beginning maybe?

Would have loved to see it.

 

Wilder v AJ for me, by a country mile. Two big punchers, US v UK etc

 

Prime A vs prime Fury for several reasons:
- both beat Wlad (Wilder didn't)
- without Fury (Aj Vs. Wilder) the lineal title would not be in play
This is an easy question.

 

I'd say from a UK perspective it has to be Fury vs AJ. Wilder got outboxed in the first fight by a post-cocaine Fury, and then got smashed to pieces by him in the second fight. Not saying Wilder vs AJ wouldn't have been a great fight; in an ideal world, they both would have happened, but Fury vs AJ would've been a seismic event in British sport and would have really helped prop up British boxing. Instead, it's trickled into obscurity and years past its sell-by date.

 

I don't get the impression that either was too interested in facing prime Joshua
Still we got to see Joshua vs Wladimir, Pulev, Whyte, Ruiz, Usyk, Povetkin. Dubois, Parker etc

 

To be honest, the only fight I ever saw was AJ vs Jake Paul live..

 

AJ Vs Wilder because prime Fury CLEARLY rapes AJ brutally...

Meanwhile AJ Vs Wilder was two heavily flawed punchers, first one who lands would have won probably. Should have fought in 2018 but ducked each other.

 

Wilder v AJ in their primes would have been huge wordwide even though Deonkey was a paper champ.

 

All three missed their chance at mainstream historic legacy with this situation. I'm old enough to remember the Tyson. Bowe.Lewis and to an extent Holyfield missed prime fights. I kind of think no Bowe. Lewis was the start of the decline in mainstream interest in boxing. Another HW 70s and MW 80s scenario would have been really positive for the sport itself.

 

Never seeing prime Pacquiao thrashing prime Floyd.

 

I’d have liked to see Wilder splatter Joshua to the canvas.

I still would

 

This is a good point. The new dynamics recalibrating boxing this decade I think would be best off presenting a sport within some structure, rather than an ad hoc irrational landscape as exists. People at my work (in Australia) talk sport in the background day to day but never mention boxing. Maybe the UK and US are different.

I'm in Korea at the moment and there's actually a lot of boxing gyms here but no non-English speakers have any engagement with back and forth antics and fight negotiations ... but actual fights between names resonate somewhat. I spend a bit of time at a snooker hall in Seoul that runs fights on the screen live and replay. ... East Asia is such a huge potential market ... but like every other potential market the boxing framework is so abstract and intermittent I don't think it's going to take off in this part of the world anytime soon. The sport letting top names avoid each other and-or fight on a yearly basis doesn't help this cause at all.