No it didn’t. After the Fury-Wlad fight was when Fury’s casual fan base skyrocketed although this surge in popularity was mainly from ladbanter football fan types who thought his trash talk was funny. Joshua has had two “action-packed fights” in that time against Wlad and Povetkin. The Parker and Takam fights were boring as hell and most casuals agreed.
So his fanbase has gone up in terms of people who think he's funny laughing at gays or whatever he's been up to but not who'll buy his fights? He was booed off in his last fight. I like the guy in fairness most of the time but come on. Casual fans think his fights are boring because he ended up on prime time casual TV and he absolutely stank.
I've thought the time out did Fury very well in the hype stakes and his come back fight was big news. Unfortunately, Fury is Fury and getting booed twice on your come back fights isn't going to do anyone any favours. Sticking it on at 5am makes it an even harder sell. 500k would be a run success I'd imagine.
The fight is being well marketed by BT Sport. Promos, documentaries etc. They don't have Sky's ace in the hole, the Sky Sports news channel which is a great platform to hammer home a promotional message. There's been quite a bit of newspaper coverage, given that there's a lot of other sports out there vying for coverage. Fury tends to get headlines with the various things he comes out with. The mental health angle / recovery story has seemed to strike a chord.
I imagine it's not great now, maybe come fight week it will be better, but ask most casuals and they won't even know who wilder is. I've managed to rope in a few of my neighbours for a lot of fights they otherwise wouldn't have watched. But there is no way in hell any of them are watching this fight at 4am.
The killer blow for this is the time. Its hard to know the mood of the nation when your a Boxing fan and inside the bubble of the Boxing world, i gauge the feel of the casual on mates, work mates, family. Right now they seem to be as interested in the Whyte Chisora rematch as much as Fury Wilder and to be honest most of them are more interested in what Anthony Joshua is doing next in April. They have little idea of the soap opera that is the sport of Boxing. So with Christmas so close and PPV's left, right and centre and the Wilder Fury fight being in the States and starting at 5am its a bit of a tough sell. But its not an impossible sell and although all is quiet right now the 2 weeks leading up to the fight will see the promotion ramped up again. But another thing that has already been mentioned in this thread i think is that Sky Sports News is the front runner for promoting up coming events, that channel is everywhere, in every pub for sure, and they are no way going to be promoting this fight very much. This needs to getting alot of attention from the papers and the papers only seem overly interested in Fury when hes just done or said something controversial.