Fighters AJ will never fight

As do Edward's lickspittles. Right?

 

By those metrics, why would Fury fight anyone...
If his excuse for not fighting 2 of the top 4 heavyweights is that he would "eat them alive", then what's the point of boxing....
If he doesn't fight AJ, Usyk, or Joyce I'm not interested, as those are his only challenges left.

 

"Dodgy officiating" is highly subjective because boxing fans radically disagree about the scoring of many fights. Individual opinions are often extremely biased so I prefer looking at what larger numbers think, as well as punch stat authorities to get a better picture.

The problem with the kind of revisionism that you engage in is that anyone can do it to fit their agenda. If you say that Lewis beat Holyfield the first time, I could say that he lost to Mercer or drew Holyfield rematch. If you say that Fury deserved to beat Wilder the first time (which was not your position in 2019: you were not giving Fury credit for beating Wilder back then, who you ranked 4th lol) I could say he didn't deserve to beat McDermott. The results are the results. It's fair enough to say "this result was controversial" or "extremely controversial" but not that "Takam beat Perez and Jennings drew with him" because that's the reverse of what actually happened. I could also say that Jennings fought a better Perez because he had the experience of fighting Takam and that the Perez who fought Jennings would have beaten Takam.

Eyeonthering have I believe close to 40% thinking that Jennings was hard done by on the cards against Joyce in Britain, whereas Takam was stopped in 6 rounds and had been gassing from round 4 or 5. Takam barely won a round against Joshua and was uncompetitive before being controversially stopped late, whereas Jennings won 3-4 on the American scorecards and went the distance against P4P No.2 Wlad. Takam pulled out of a fight against Ortiz to fight Duhaupas (which never materialised) whereas Jennings fought Ortiz as the underdog.

Whyte and Parker are prime Chisora level, hence it's a life and death whenever one of them fight Chisora. Whyte and Parker were lucky to have A-side advantage against Chisora in 3/4 fights or the ultra-narrow SD's they got would have gone against them. Chisora is a decent fighter: arguably Vitali's best win but no one should confuse him for a genuine top 5 guy, same with Whyte or Parker. When they fight the top 5, be it fringe top 5 Joshua or Joyce, Wlad, Usyk, Fury then they get beaten, if not schooled/destroyed.

Ruiz did distinguish himself from Whyte, Parker, Chisora and Pulev by beating Joshua but it's not yet clear to people if Ruiz is that good or if he exposed Joshua's vulnerabilities. If Wilder schools or destroys Ruiz then people will tend to think that Joshua was more overhyped than Ruiz was good. Wilder and Ruiz have four notable mutual opponents: Morales, Liakhovich, Arreola and Ortiz and Wilder beat all of them in better fashion, younger and fresher versions too, unlike the examples you provide with post-Wilder versions of Molina, Szpilka, Duhaupas and so on, which are far more comparable with Wilder's KO of Firtha, whereas Povetkin went the 10 round distance in a mildly competitive fight, or Breazeale who Wilder destroyed in 1 but Joshua went 7 with, or Stiverne 2 who Wilder destroyed in 1 but Joyce went 6 with, or Helenius who Wilder destroyed in 1 but Whyte went all 12 with etc.

 

AJ will be a good boy and wag his tail and fight whoever Eddie tells him to, when Eddie tells him to, and for how much Eddie tells him to.

The most prominent headline in the past many years in boxing has been: “Eddie Hearn says AJ says ____” because AJ is incapable of speaking for himself. Our knowledge of what he “wants” and what he “will do” comes always straight form the puppet-master’s mouth and never from AJ’s.

Of course we saw after Usyk II what happens when Joshua tries to speak for himself.

“Hip hip.”