Usyk did not beat AJ till September of 2021. 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and even 2021. Joshua-Fury would have been the biggest fight in boxing history. Yet they were both content to fight other guys and delay this match up. Can't blame Usyk for spoiling the party. In future, when you have two big stars who both have a belt, match them up immediately. Don't wait years and years.
Turki wasn't running the show yet. If he was we would have seen it when we should have. Turki saved boxing.
True. But i think Hearn and Warren were doing their best to maximize their earnings without risking it.
Fury wanted warm up fights and a belt. Drew with Wilder, and then Wilder had a rematch clause that was court enforced
Fury was gone after Wlad for 3 years so there was no chance of it for quite a while. The reason was that it never happened before Usyk is that on Fury's comeback AJ wouldn't give him 50/50. People can make all the arguments they want about 'A-side' and whatever, but if AJ had given Fury 50/50 that fight would have happened. Whatever the deal was with Wilder, it was almost certainly better than the AJ one which is why Fury took it even though Wilder was just as dangerous. So after AJ rejected the Fury fight, and also 'couldn't make' the Wilder fight, Fury fought Wilder and got caught up in the trilogy. The next big opportunity came after AJ lost to Usyk, but at that point Fury was on the rise and they wanted 'confidence building' fights so dodged it.
AJ didn't fight Fury or Wilder, and only fought Usyk when he was a mandatory and was told he would, without a doubt, be stripped of the title if he didn't fight him (Usyk was NOT seen as the HW force he is today at that time, either). Says it all, really.
Why do you wrap valuables in bubble wrap when moving house? Hearn been hanging out the back of his prized possession as long as he can. Embarrassing this fight has fell to the level he’s now talking about Tottenham stadium. It’s still a massive UK fight, but remember when the promoters wouldn’t even entertain having it in the UK? Greed cost us the biggest fight in a long time. Instead we got 10 years of paying 30 quid to see Whyte et al on PPV
Similar to Bowe V Lewis in 1992/93 for different reasons. Pure BS really, the evil's of the sport. Wilder V Fury 2 in early 2020 had a rematch clause for the loser, and this was right before COVID which stopped everything for a year and a half. Fury almost fighting Kabayel did not help as the courts ruled the case in Wilder's favour which took a long while to conclude. When things were normal in autumn 2021, Fury had to fight Wilder for the 3rd time and AJ had to fight someone that would fulfil his WBO mandatory in Usyk which AJ lost and rematched. Whereas, Fury had his WBC mandatory in Whyte after the Wilder fight. In short - the rematch clause for the second Wilder V Fury fight is the reasoning for this.