Hearn post fight press conference

Macklin was also very honest at the end of the fight when he said that Joshua is losing this fight. He need´s a knockout.

 

How does Eddie now pick up the pieces of AJ’s Humpty Dumpty man and put them back together to have a sellable brand?

We saw his first efforts last night to make AJ into some kind of sympathetic character (despite his antics) and I’ve seen a few scattered comments (“I feel sorry for AJ, poor lad”) that show it’s working in some small degree.

Eddie’s Ted Talk:

1) AJ trained really hard. Of course he’s upset that he lost after training hard.

Counterpoint: Like other boxers don’t train hard — none of his challengers who lost, every other class fighter in the world don’t train, Fury lost all that weight without hard work … Usyk apparently didn’t train hard? So we should forgive AJ’s meltdown because, you know, he actually did his job and went to the gym. Getting AJ to cry at the press conference was a step in this direction (‘poor fella, we don’t want you to feel bad AJ, we still love you, etc, etc’).

2) AJ is under enormous pressure. We simply cannot understand.

Counterpoints:

A) So what? Pressure comes with the territory. He had basically zero pressure in this fight because he lost the first one thus had no titles on the line he could lose. Most people favored Usyk.

B) Where does this pressure come from, Eddie? Was it from you promoting him as a generational fighter and him having to live up to it? All those sponsorships tied to AJ and he doesn’t want to lose those? First-world problems.

C) AJ has made enough money for his children’s children’s children to live like kings. And he went into this fight with a, what, $100M Dazn deal already in pocket win or lose? That’s not pressure. That’s easy street.

D) You wanna talk pressure? How about Usyk, who is carrying the weight of an entire country that Russia is trying to wipe out?

3) AJ was even or ahead through nine rounds on Eddie’s card and lost a split decision — turn a couple of rounds the other way and he wins. Eddie will underscore this and rewrite history going forward as if Joshua was within a whisker of topping this ATG Usyk and should actually be applauded for his effort as he’d have beaten any other man born of a woman, past or present, on that night.

Counterpoint: LOL.

4) AJ needs to be more active. He wasn’t fighting often enough and lost his edge.

Counterpoint: This is Eddie’s Dazn play — he wants to get AJ back in the ring ASAP and keep him busy so he can squeeze every last dollar out of AJ that he can. Eddie has to rehabilitate AJ and make the public forget his bad sportsmanship so he can sell him … the quicker he puts distance between this fight and future ones the better, so get a win under his belt and let people focus on that rather than this pathetic postfight display.

Biggest issue in rebuilding AJ as a draw is that Eddie no longer has a platform to do so. A few carefully controlled interviews on Sky emphasizing the pity angle and how hard he works, the enormous pressure this man had to shoulder, let’s skip past the Usyk II postfight and look ahead to the next fight and he could take leaps forward on this.

But Dazn doesn’t have the PR machine nor the reach in the UK (or beyond) to shape opinions, create interest and mold minds. The only ones who subscribe are hardcore boxing fans and the Matchroom/AJ FC machine needs casuals to buy in — nothing Dazn does is going to tell the narrative Eddie wants to put forward to change opinion on AJ and undo the damage.

 

Pre fight build up will be interesting when Whyte starts calling him a cry baby and having mentally lost it.

Doubt Whyte will hold back on that stuff.