Eddie Hearn on Joshua-Klitschko rematch

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid: British promoter Eddie Hearn says a rematch between his fighter IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko is possible next depending on whether there’s interest in a second fight from the boxing public and whether Wladimir wants the rematch. The way that Wladimir, 41, has been talking lately, the rematch was a dead certainty, but Hearn has not seemed nearly as excited about a second fight between Joshua and Klitschko for some reason.

Hearn said that if it were up to him, he’d like to move Joshua in another direction towards a fight against British heavyweight Tyson Fury. That’s a fight that might not be able to happen in 2017, because Fury has to get his boxing license back from the British Boxing Board of Control, and he has a lot of weight to lose. As of last week, Fury still looked very fat with a great deal of weight that still needs to be dropped before he can even consider fighting Joshua.

“I’ll remind the governing bodies, they havethe biggest star in world boxing as their heavyweight champion,” said Hearn to Fighthype.com in response to the sanctioning bodies wanting Joshua to fight mandatory challengers. “We have to fight mandatories. We’re not going to avoid them. We’ll have to deal with them at some time, but you have to remember the size of Anthony Joshua. It’s not just about the belts. If there’s a demand for a rematch, it could well happen,” said Hearn.

I don’t know if you can say that Joshua is a world boxing star the way that Hearn is talking. Joshua looked terrible against Klitschko, and we don’t know what kind of ratings it brought in on HBO and Showtime in the States. To be “the biggest star in world boxing,” as Hearn calls Joshua, he would need to bring in HUGE ratings on HBO and Showtime. If he doesn’t bring in big ratings, then you can’t say he’s the biggest star, because we have other guys that bring in big ratings in their fights in the U.S, such as Sergey Kovalev, Andre Ward, Gennady Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez.

I seriously doubt that Joshua brings in big ratings when he’s not fighting a big name like Klitschko. Joshua’s fights against Dominic Breazeale and Eric Molina didn’t bring in big ratings in the U.S. So even if Joshua’s fight against Wladimir does good ratings, it could be due to Wladimir rather than Joshua. Wladimir has had his fights televised in the U.S for any years now off and on.

Joshua is a big star in the UK, but not a star in the U.S right. Hearn can label Joshua as the biggest worldwide star in boxing, but for him to prove that, he’ll need to try and monetize the different countries for PPV for Joshua so that we can really see if he is what he claims him to be. Joshua is not a PPV star in the U.S at this time, so I have to say that he’s not the biggest star in world boxing. I think Joshua is only the biggest star in British boxing.

“If Wlad wants it, no problem,” said Hearn about Joshua-Klitschko rematch. ”If there isn’t or if Wlad doesn’t want it, it probably won’t happen. So we’re not going to make a decision on our next fight until we know what Wladimir Klitschko wants to do. For me, after a fight like that, even Arnold Schwartzenegger said on his Twitter he’d love to see a rematch,” said Hearn.

Wladimir has already made it crystal clear that he wants a rematch with Joshua. Wladimir says he feels has nothing to feel about his performance, because he doesn’t feel like he came out a loser. Wladimir notes that he had Joshua badly hurt in round 6 after knocking him down, and he made the mistake of not trying to finish him. Wladimir said he didn’t try and go for the knockout because he felt it was his night.

Personally, I can’t blame Wladimir one bit for not trying to knock Joshua out, because he was dominating him so easily from the last 30 seconds of round 5 through round 10. Wladimir looked like he had made a decision to try and box Joshua to win a decision instead of going after him to knock him out. There was less risk involved in boxing him than it would have been to shoot for the knockout.

Joshua hit Wladimir at the start of the 11th with a big right hand that hurt him. Wladimir seemed to recover, but the big crowd of 90,000 fans went crazy and this motivated Joshua to empty his gas tank for a second time by shooting for the knockout. Joshua went all out to get the knockout. Believe me; if Joshua hadn’t got the knockout, he would have been at Wladimir’s mercy in round 12.

I’ve seen a heavy gas out as badly as Joshua does. He gets VERY tired when he throws a lot of punches, and he stays tired for several rounds. Usually when a fighter gases out, they’re able to come back in the next round to resume attacking, but not with Joshua. He’s been compared to a young George Foreman, but I don’t think that’s a fair comparison for Foreman. He never gassed out during his early career from throwing a lot of punches in one round. Foreman would gas out after 8 or 9 rounds. We saw that in Foreman’s losses to Muhammad Ali and Jimmy Young.

”We’ll have to see. I don’t think Anthony would complain about a rematch,: said Hearn about a Joshua-Klitschko rematch. ”I don’t think Wlad would too. I think Wladimir will think, ‘I nearly had him,’ and he did. So it may spur him on for one more crack,” said Hearn.

I’d be very surprised if Wladimir changes his mind and decides he doesn’t want a second fight with Joshua. The only way Wladimir will do that is if he decides to retire from boxing. He’s not going to say no to a Joshua rematch and then go and fight someone less popular, even though Wladimir would likely make easy work of WBO champion Joseph parker. If Wladimir wanted an easy belt, he could snatch the WBOi strap from parker without any problems. There would be less interest and likely a lot less money in a fight against Parker.

“Boxing doesn’t always give you a top product like the NFL and the NBA does, but when boxing is at it’s best, it doesn’t take a backseat,” said Max Kellerman on ESPN’s First Take. “That’s the best sporting event you’ll see in the month of April and May. It was an amazing event, and Anthony Joshua is now an international superstar, the heavyweight champion of the world,” said Kellerman about Joshua.

I wouldn’t say that Joshua is an “International superstar” the way that Kellerman is calling him. That was not the type of performance by Joshua that would turn him into a star in the States. I mean, come on. If Gennady Golovkin was knocked down and almost knocked out in his third fight shown in the U.S like Joshua was, he wouldn’t gain a lot of boxing fans. The fans would be criticizing him, saying that he was “exposed.” Golovkin wasn’t even knocked down by Daniel Jacobs in their fight last March, and yet he’s been heavility criticized in the States. Joshua looked far worse than Golovkin did last Saturday against Klitschko. That was not an “international star” performance if you ask me.

“I like Anthony Joshua, but he almost didn’t get up from that one,” said Stephen A. Smith. “I want to see when someone else hits him who’s younger,” said Smith.

“Deontay Wilder,” said Kellerman in commenting about what Smith said in wanting to see Joshua hit by someone younger than the 41-year-old Klitschko.

We’re going to have to wait a while before Deontay Wilder gets a shot at testing Joshua’s chin, because that fight likely won’t happen until 2018 at the earliest.

It’s always a bad idea to start hyping a fighter right off the bat before they’ve even proven themselves. Let’s be honest here; Joshua would have been knocked out by the talented WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder if he had him as badly hurt as Wladimir did in round 6. Deontay would have finished Joshua off. Wladimir doesn’t seem to have the killer instinct at this point in his career, because a prime version of Wladimir would have royally smoked Joshua. There would be no way that a younger Wladimir wouldn’t have put Joshua out of there. Take a look at some of Wladimir’s earlier fights in his career against the likes of Ray Mercer and tell me that he wouldn’t have obliterated Joshua once he had him teetering on the brink of collapse in the 6th.

Hearn almost lost his golden goose Joshua last Saturday night, and now I think he’s got stage fright thinking about putting him out there for a second fight with the more talented Ukrainian. Wladimir can improve considerably in the rematch. I can’t say the same thing about Joshua. He’s as good as he’ll ever be.