Joshua told Hearn to make the fight. But I truly believe that Hearn stalled it in order to protect him. And obviously from a business point of view. Tyson was criticised for the Chisora fight, because nobody wanted to see it again.
Chisora was always the real target for the fight. After the Whyte fight Fury said he was retiring. Then there were rumours of Kabayel who was ranked around 14-15 with WBC. Fury then approached Chisora (who was ranked in the 20s with WBC) prior to Usyk v Joshua 2. Then Fury complained that Chisora was pricing himself out. Things went quiet and Chisora started getting bumped up the WBC rankings little by little each month. Then negotiations failed with Joshua, and low-and-behold Chisora is in the top 15 (instead of Kabayel) with the WBC, and so Fury can make the fight "because he couldn't get Joshua in the ring". He fought an exhibition masquerading as a title defence. - Fair enough, the WBC do it for other champions, so why not Fury. But let's be frank: Fury played the fans. It was always going to be Chisora. Joshua negotiations were merely a smoke screen so he could make a fight no one wanted. Throw Diamond Boy Charr into the mix, and suddenly Chisora III - top 10 on boxrec (lol Frank) - doesn't seem so bad.
Yeah this is a decent take. So much of boxing is basically a scripted soap opera, all about the narrative. Fans are the mark, always. We have a duty as fans not to bite on every piece of media, it’s not difficult. Stay away until fights are actually made. They chuck all this storyline media out there because the fans can’t get enough of it, apparently. So really they’re just giving the fans what they want; something to consume then react to. Fights themselves have become almost secondary - very wwe. stop giving your energy to the noise, and the noise stops, it ain’t difficult.
"He fought an exhibition masquerading as a title defence." Pretty funny that Fury's exhibition title defence against Chisora 3 was more competitive than his mandatory title defence against Whyte.
Also pretty telling how shot old fifteen losses del gave USKY more to think about than Joshua did. (Post fight antics aside)
He did but I don't think Chisora was shot at all: in Chisora's next fight most had him beating Parker without much trouble, who had close wins over Ruiz, Hughie, Takam and almost KO'd Whyte (who Chisora was also 50-50 with years prior). Recently Chisora beat Pulev and while both are well past their best now, Chisora may have won with favourable officials back in the day as well, as Pulev had in Germany. The only fighters who looked a level or more above Chisora were Fury, Vitali, Haye and Usyk. He's been a consistent fighter for most of his career I'd say. One triangle theory told me that if Usyk did much better vs Chisora over 12 than Parker did and Parker could take Joshua 12 and give him a few things to think about with a bodyguard referee against him, then on anything close to a level playing field Joshua was in big trouble vs Usyk.
Doesn't surprise me, the opponent is often carried in an exhibition bout. Mayweather, too, stopped McGreggor in the 10th. But, you are correct, Whyte's performance was pretty abysmal. Though the fight went as we all predicted. And, yes, I was championing for Whyte to get his shot, but I was under no illusions of how the fight would go. But hey, Fury did what needed to be done against Whyte, his mandatory Challenger. Chisora 3? He was just milking his supporters on that one.