Dissatisfied with the dynamics of career development and the frequency of matches, Hrgovic decided to bring new people to his staff, who should help him in the business part of his career. He agreed to work with the powerful lawyer Greg Smith, and hired manager Keith Connelly as an advisor.
Legal help is smart move - nobody wants Balkan champion, Usyk will try to get out of this fight, but maybe there is some rule of having to go through all of mandatories, rules get bent.
Good luck to him but it’ll be a tough road. He needs to find a promoter that’ll actually be willing to put up good money and risk taking a loss so he can get better opponents.
He needs to follow Joe Joyce's route. Both made their debut autumn 2017 and both have had a similar amount of fights. Joyce has been handled much better and is on the verge of a world title challenge.
I find it difficult to believe that his team's management capabilities have been called into question after they shrewdly maneuvered Hrgovic into title-shot contention after Filip had only 15 fights against mostly nondescript opposition.
He'd have better chance of paydays by opening Instagram and TikTok channels and trying to be the Croatian Jake Paul.
He and Fury should fight next. If Fury wins, he becomes the IBF mandatory, which revies the undisputed match against Usyk.
Joyce was already fighting the likes of Bermane Stiverne in his eighth fight and Bryant Jennings in his tenth. Meanwhile Hrgovic's best opponents by his tenth fight were Eric Molina, Kevin Johnson and Amir Mansour. OK you can argue that isn't a huge gap in quality (I'd disagree) but where you can't argue that is by Joyce's fifteenth fight he's already got Dubois, Takam, Hammer and Joe Parker under his belt. Hrgovic's best opponent by his fifteenth fight was Zhilei Zhang, whom he scraped by. The rest are a string of no-name guys. I'm not calling them bums, and some of them had on paper quite respectable records. But they do nothing to raise his profile, and if this is the best his former handlers were able to scrape up for him he's right to get rid of them. You can't even call them good experience builder fights because he was clearly overwhelmed the moment he stepped up against a mid-level guy like Zhang. At this point it's sink or swim for Hrgovic. He's got the amateur pedigree and should be getting fast tracked. We'll find out soon enough if he's another Joyce or just another Yoka.
Zhang>Hammer, Dubois Not to mention that Zhang beat Parker as an amateur. I agree though, Joyce certainly has fought more popular opposition and benefits from being from a wealthy country with a large boxing following.
Better than Hammer sure, but not enough evidence to say he's better than Dubois. Remember he scraped a draw past Jerry Forrest (who was being beaten by the likes of old man Takam and Pulev) and doesn't have anyone particularly noteworthy on his resume. Before you mention it I'm aware Dubois isn't that proven either; my point is that neither man should be ranked above the other at this stage. And Joyce tore through Dubois. Hrgovic very nearly lost to Zhang. Let's see how Joyce does against Zhang. It'll provide a lot of needed context.