‘Tony Yoka will be the French Anthony Joshua’

 by  John Dennen

RICHARD SCHAEFER, the head of Ringstar, the company that has recently joined forces with David Haye’s Hayemaker promotional company, explained the signing of Olympic super-heavyweight gold medallist, Tony Yoka.

“I really believe that a heavyweight gold medallist and a heavyweight World champion as well is the ambassador of the sport. It’s a global title,” Schaefer told Boxing News.

“He is such a gifted athlete. He’s young still, as a heavyweight, he’s 24. So there’s going to be not really a big rush, rushing him through the ranks, but really building him up, building him up in France. He’s going to be fighting mainly in France but he’s going to be fighting overseas as well. The plan is to have him fight once a year in the United States early on and the plan is as well to maybe bring him over here [to the UK].”

Yoka will have a major television broadcaster in his homeland, Canal Plus. “That’s the biggest TV channel in France and as good as it gets. To have the support of the TV channel in France is obviously huge,” Schaefer continued.

“It used to have a rich tradition, boxing in France, and I think just like you’ve seen here, you’ve seen what Anthony Joshua has done, he’s really elevated boxing in the UK to a different level. Boxing was always big… But I think it was really Anthony Joshua who elevated it even to a different level and I think the same is going to happen in France. It takes that one star. That one person to really elevate an entire sport and we’ve seen that in other sports as well.”