He definitely did look fresher vs AJ, to my eye. But I agree that Furys win vs him was better, even if the fight (if you can call it that) was horrible to watch. Fury has wins over Wlad, Wilder and Whyte. He’s the best of a poor era. Hardly a murderers row but given the fact he’s unbeaten is the best resume in the division currently. It doesn’t stand the test of time (IMO), beating the winner of the Usyk fight will help.
Fury hasn’t defeated anyone that you would associate with the word top. You could only really name 5 people in general and assume that those are his best wins.
The Price fight was still something people were calling for post Thompson. Heck I wouldn't of minded seeing it right up until Price announced his retirement. I don't blame him for pulling out of the Ustinov given the circumstances, but the press conference speaks to his reluctance to fight for reasons outside of his sick uncle. Discounting Helenius, because his manner of victory wasn't good enough, is not a good reason. Well as I said at the very start, he lacks top 50 big men: Nascimento... he was stopped in the first round by Fury and now has a record of 18-22-0. Firth and Abell were also far from being top 50 fighters, and 20-8-1 and 29-7-0 are/were losing records by today's standards. But these are fighters that help a young prospect develop. Schwartz - barely scrapes into the top 50. Pianetta - outside top 50, but Fury was getting himself in shape.Wilder x3 - he certainly had issues with him, but they are great wins for Kronk Fury! Wallin - top 30 fighter (with good potential), Fury looked terrible and should have lost on cuts. Resultantly fired his trainer, and switched to Kronk. Of course we have to credit him for Klitschko too (fantastic win), but he ducked the rematch. So that is a total of three decent to great big men, and he had serious issues with both Wilder and Wallin, and ducked the rematch with Klitschko. Hopefully he fights Joyce next. btw, to be fair to Joshua, outside of Ruiz Jr. everything else was a mandatory challenger. And as Joshua (2019) pointed out there are certain standards you are expected to maintain when you are at the top: "I can't fight Wallin, don't think I can ever fight lower-tier heavyweights."
"Heck I wouldn't of minded seeing it right up until Price announced his retirement" The fight lost a lot of its lustre after grandpa Thompson banged him out twice in a row and he was then in a rebuilding process. Then Teper banged him out and another rebuilding process, inactivity and so on. Why didn't AJ fight 6'8 puncher Price when that was a genuine option? It would have been a much bigger domestic fight than Molina. Helenius had to rebuild post-Chisora as well and didn't get the Vitali fight due to what was regarded as a blatant robbery. You also assume that he would have wanted to fight a rising Fury. All of the impetus is on Fury apparently, who was ultra-high risk for someone like Helenius. Helenius also had a lot of problems with injuries and depression and was inactive for several years. Fury was probably reluctant to play into K2's hands, felt he'd been messed around with Chisora pulling out and Hughie's death was the last straw. With no preparation for Ustinov he probably would have fought him more wildly than usual. But how much can be taken from how you fight an opponent on a couple of day's notice, after preparing for a totally different body type? Fury lost the plot after the Wlad fight for several reasons, also no doubt wanted to spite him. But no one seriously believes that Fury was scared of losing to a man he'd already beaten convincingly in his backyard, who would be older and more worn, fighting away as the B-side rather than at home as the A-side. The fact that Fury rushed into the Wilder fight after his comeback, almost got KO'd and came back to beat him on the front foot also dispels this narrative, as Wilder did much more damage to Fury than Wlad did and came a lot closer to winning. Nascimento was dropped in the 1st round but KO'd in the 5th. He went on to become a journeyman and got his chin cracked but went the distance with Chisora, Wach, Duhaupas and Kuzmin among others. 20-8-1 and 29-7 are by definition winning records (minimum 250% more wins than losses) and they similar records on paper to Chisora's, in so far as that means anything. Price has a similar record today (25-7) as does Ustinov (36-6). Fury's fought No.1 Wlad, No.2 Wilder x3 and an at the time unranked but 20-0 southpaw Wallin, went 4-0-1 against them, 4/5 times away from home but he's reluctant to fight tall men? This is a pretty contrived narrative. Wallin was in the discussion as a potential AJ opponent when there were talks of AJ stepping aside and he was meant to be Whyte's opponent before Whyte pulled out with an imaginary shoulder injury. AJ's mandatories have disproportionately come against short heavyweights, light punchers and older heavyweights, usually a combination thereof. Of his 9 best opponents only one is 6'5+ and only one is a KO artist (Wlad) with two more who could be described as punchers (Povetkin, Whyte). Three were 39+. So there's a conspicuous paucity of tall, hard punching, sub-40 year old heavyweights on AJ's record, whereas there is a relative abundance of fights against them on Fury's. Whether Fury fights Joyce, Whyte, Ruiz etc. doesn't matter very much imo. The fight that matters above all as it stands is Fury-Usyk. Usyk is a lot more interesting than another tall heavyweight anyway, as he's a southpaw (like Wallin) cruiserweight (like Cunningham). Fury only has one of each on his record that are good fighters and he's never fought a hybrid of those types, so it's much more intriguing aside from the fact that Usyk has already washed Joyce in the WSB and would be heavily favoured to do so again in the pros.
That is an overly pedantic reply. There is a difference between a top 30 guy ending his career with 10 or so losses fighting contenders, and a journeyman who is being used to give experience to developing pros. Come on NEETz. It is engaging in sophistry to pretend otherwise I agree that I would have liked to see Joshua fight a Price instead of Molina, that was not a fight I was interested in. But I remember reading repeatedly on here that the deal to get the Martin fight was that he would fight two more PBC fighters (which happened to be Breazeale and Molina) And pretty sure Joshua doesn't get to choose who is mandatories are (yes yes, IBF and Takam). Otherwise he likely would never have wanted to fight Usyk. Heck, he tried his best to duck Usyk, but couldn't without dropping his belt. But as always you put Joshua under the microscope and ignore any surrounding circumstances, but give Fury the benefit of the doubt and look for excuses instead of asking questions of him. However, I agree, I too want to see Fury fight Usyk, but Joyce is still undefeated as a pro and an Olympian, and current top 10. It's a good fight. And one a lot of people were calling for back on January when Whyte was first floated as an opponent.
"But I remember reading repeatedly on here that the deal to get the Martin fight was that he would fight two more PBC fighters (which happened to be Breazeale and Molina)" That's very convenient. In order to fight Martin they just had to agree to tie themselves up for another two fights against those no-hopers. "And pretty sure Joshua doesn't get to choose who is mandatories are (yes yes, IBF and Takam)" Matchroom have a lot of financial and political clout, I think they have influence. Even if they are just prisoners of circumstance I would still question the objective threat posed by most of AJ's competition in Britain (Martin, Breazeale, Molina, Takam, Parker, Pulev). Maybe Mormeck, Wach, Thompson 2, Pianeta and Leapai within a two year period were all "mandatories" but they were poor opponents nonetheless. "But as always you put Joshua under the microscope and ignore any surrounding circumstances, but give Fury the benefit of the doubt and look for excuses instead of asking questions of him." Claiming that Fury has been avoiding tall fighters who are good isn't just putting Fury under the microscope, it's the opposite of reality (Fury has fought them five times) whereas it's an obvious critique of AJ's record seeing as he has only fought one on one occasion. "And one a lot of people were calling for back on January when Whyte was first floated as an opponent." Fury's fought Wilder (ranked 3rd) and Whyte (ranked 5th) within a 6.5 month period, he's the most active HW of significance by a margin. He is probably thinking more of his negotiating position for the undisputed fight right now than a relatively small beer fight with Joyce.
