Every time an A side fighter thinks they're getting a scrumptious pie to devour it's been a bomb that blows up in their face. Let's have a look at the numerous cherry picks gone wrong in recent years: Fury - Wilder I. Wilder looked happy to defend his WBC belt against the Eric Molina's of the world until he was 40, then have his big cash out fight against Joshua. What's this? Tyson Fury, the obese crackhead is coming back for a few paydays? He looks awful? Send him the contract. This was supposed to be a one and done fight to legitimize Wilder's weak string of defenses, but no. Fury - Wilder II. So the gypsy crackhead has a heart. Oh well, he was basically dead in the first match. How hard can it be to finish what was started? Joshua - Ruiz I. Ambitious Eddie and the Da Zone gang are looking to take over the world. Who better to finally crack the American market than him and humble AJ. All they need is an opponent. Someone respectable but more importantly a strong candidate for a highlight reel KO. Fat Andy is available? Great. Povetkin - Whyte I. This guy was just KO'd, looked awful against Hughie Fury of all people, and had a brutal fight with Hunter. He's 40 and has one good leg. A fine scalp for our "B" guy to take so he can eventually lose to our "A" guy for all the belts. Usyk - Joshua. We don't love that we've gotta take this fight, but it should be easy enough and will put us in the driver's seat for negotiations with Fury. Usyk is clearly too small, injury prone, and obviously can't punch. He wants his big time payday and he'll be back in the provinces of Ukraine retired in no time. Interesting stuff. These aren't just upsets. Nearly all of them are classic cases of cherry picks gone wrong. It seems that every time an A side fighter thinks they've found the perfect mark, it was them who was the mark all along. The HW division is that final scene of Snatch but over and over. Usyk is still seen as the mark in many ways, and I can't help but feel he knows something we don't.
Fury-Wilder 2 is a big stretch as Fury had 2.66 years and an additional 4 fights since his mid 2018 comeback exhibition and was regarded as No.1 by that point. Fury-Wilder 1 was a cherrypick to some degree but Fury was only a marginal underdog there. With Usyk they were between a rock and a hard place as they didn't want to be shaken down for a belt without a fight and they were confident that they could keep it close enough to steal a decision at home, so another lesser cherrypick. Joshua-Ruiz 1 and Povetkin-Whyte 1 were massive cases of it though.
You forgot Helenius-Kownacki, Forrest-Zhang, Chaney-Arias, Sokolowski-Fox, Fedosov-Majidov, Rice-Coffie, Winters-Teslenko, Mulowayi-Davtaev, Johnson-Hernandez and Kudukov-Jones.
Don't forget Shawndell vs Babic. Beforehand everyone was saying Babic has only had 3 fights all against uber drivers. ''Look what Shawndell did against former world champion 26-2 Joe Parker in his previous fight, lasting into the 5th and giving him big problems'' ''Look what Shawndell did to highly touted 16-0 prospect Teslenko who was being tipped for big things by many. He knocked him out on his own soil'' But when 3-0 rank novice Babic batters Shawndell into a pulp in a couple of rounds suddenly Shawndell's a ''bum'' and The Savage is a hype job who ain't beat anyone Some folk just hate to give a Balkan warrior his just due This content is protected
Babic was heavily favoured to beat old latecomer Shawndell, who was regarded as having exposed a hypejob in Teslenko. Going 5 with Parker isn't anything special; even 40 year old delivery driver Leapai (quite possibly Wlad's worst defence) went 10 and Cojanu (a master of getting KO'd in 2 rounds) went the full 12. Babic is Whyte's protégé and a fan-friendly (currently protected) fighter.
Usyk vs AJ wasn't a cherry pick. The mandatory Usyk is greatest CW of all time. Whyte vs Povetkin wasn't a cherry pick. Ruiz was first choice but didn't want the Whyte smoke and Whyte called Fury's bluff but he bottled it. Povetkin was a top 5 fighter at the time and most known fighter to UK fans available. Wilder vs Fury was massive cherry picked gone wrong and Wilder accidently admitted so in a interview.
I'm hoping all these instances leads promoters to make the big fights while they can, out of fear that an upset is just around the corner
To be fair, it was cocaine, not Crack. Big difference. Huge. Also, in the interest of fairness, Joshua was supposed to fight Big Baby Miller until Miller tested positive FOR ALL THE DRUGS. Andy Ruiz Jr just happen to be ready to go when he got the call but yes, Miller and then Ruiz Jr were supposed to be highlight reel knock outs.
There’s indeed been more upsets than usual in the last 3 years, but It’s ridicuolus to call Wilder/Fury 2 or Joshua/Usyk cherrypicks.
I agree that Wilder-Fury 2 (fighting the consensus No.1 fighter in the division and only marginal underdog in America) cannot be legitimately regarded as a cherrypick but Joshua-Usyk had serious elements of it: Although everyone knew that Usyk was a very good fighter, he had been relatively inactive, looked poor in the Chisora fight (scraping a 7-5 decision in Britain) was getting on for 35, had injuries and was regarded as a featherfisted cruiser. Hearn thought that Usyk was cashing out, especially after Usyk posted that video asking for "more money". They believed (as did many of us) that so long as AJ boxed and managed to stay on his feet, the fight would be close enough for AJ to get a Matchroom decision. Worst comes to worse, AJ defends his titles with a draw and on to a two fight deal with Fury. Howard Foster did his part by dutifully gifting AJ the first two rounds but he didn't want to lose his job and understood that the two relatively impartial judges would overrule him, so he also gave all of the later rounds to Usyk. The only reasons why they couldn't rob Usyk was because on a round by round basis he was too dominant and the fight was too high profile for the kind of blatant corruption that occurs when A-side's like Campbell Hatton fight low level journeymen. Usyk also fit the bill as a big name to defeat; an undefeated, undisputed ATG "P4P" fighter on AJ's resume: medium risk but very high reward when considering the costs of being shook down for a belt by a European cruiserweight (losing the undisputed fight, especially as Usyk could then lose to Warren's fighter Joyce, who could then easily unify with Fury). I like to think that Arum and co. played slick Eddie like a fiddle, pretending they would fight AJ in the summer for a two fight undisputed deal on the back of 18 months of inactivity for Fury, only to doublecross Hearn and fight Wilder again, knowing that Haymon was always going to win the arbitration. This gave AJ relatively little time to prepare for Usyk and disrupted him mentally, while Fury's fight was delayed (legitimately or not) with a Covid pullout. Team Fury could then observe how AJ dealt with a southpaw cruiser mover and how Usyk dealt with a SHW colossus, with them both taking something out of each other, maybe over two fights, while AJ and Usyk would learn relatively little about Fury from the trilogy fight. The big gambit was whether Fury would beat Wilder again, though they were confident that Fury would find a way past his now aging, likely mentally damaged and mutually inactive opponent. It was a lot more difficult than they thought it would be, partly due to Fury's disastrous camp but they won again and got Fury 10 full rounds of activity. A bonus of AJ losing to Usyk was that it raised Fury and Wilder's stocks indirectly, as AJ is no longer necessarily even seen as the 3rd best heavyweight of this era, which increased the value of Fury's trilogy win over Wilder (which also happened to be an ATG fight).
Fury vs Wilder 1 was huge cherry pick gone bad. That’s the king right there. Wilder’s team thought Fury was washed up and they knew he couldn’t punch - totally revived Fury’s career and derailed the Wilder’s career. I don’t think you can classify Povetkin as a cherry pick. His resume is too deep and although over the hill he was an underdog not necessarily a cherry pick.
Whyte was a 1/4 favourite: Povetkin was 41 years old and coming off 4 wars (including a KO defeat) in his last 4 fights, whereas Fury was almost even money and 30 years old coming off two tune up fights. Wilder losing to the 6'9, 270 lbs HW champion in a classic trilogy in which two of the fights were very competitive/wars is far less disastrous on every level than getting battered by and quitting against Andy Ruiz.
Usy v Joshua wasn't a cherry-pick by any stretch - if Hearn and Joshua could have found ANY way to get out of that without vacating a belt they would have, which is polar opposite of a cherry pick. AJ fought Usyk because his only other choice was to vacate, and I give him props there because I thought they might actually vacate at one point.
