Via Eon Kennedy: April 1 is the date that has been chosen to begin the story of Anthony Joshua’s redemption. It’s curious that a man who was twice the unified heavyweight champion of the world would need a redemption story but again, Joshua’s career is indeed curious when you really consider it. .
Joshua has made his way up the pro boxing ranks since the 2012 London Olympics with a gold medal and million dollar smile, and has had the same commercial effect on Matchroom Boxing as Hulk Hogan did for WWE in the early years. eighty. Joshua has been a mainstream star from the start, and with that will come various opportunities and challenges. The biggest chance is clearly that Joshua has quickly won the world title against the worst heavyweight champion in recent memory, that man, Charles Martin went to London and more or less gave Joshua the belt. IBF. It’s not Joshua’s fault that the opponent he beat to win his first world championship wasn’t a lame duck, Joshua was there to fight and didn’t pick an opponent, but the fast track of the man. promoting Joshua, Eddie Hearn can be seen as a blow of genius or a rushed project that is currently stalled depending on how you look at it.
Whatever happens next in Joshua’s career, even if he loses to Jermaine Franklin on April 1, the career the Londoner has enjoyed has been unbelievable by any measure. any. Inside the ring, Joshua has won an Olympic gold medal and is a two-time world heavyweight champion.
Outside of the ring, he is a commercial giant with lots of lucrative endorsements and has filled stadiums and broken pay-per-view records for years. But strangely enough, after all of that, Joshua is still finding the respect he doesn’t get from the boxing community. Joshua’s hunger for respect is probably associated with many of the criticisms directed at him, such as; His path to the world title was easy, that he beat Wladimir Klitschko after Tyson Fury had, that his rematch win over Andy Ruiz was a cowardly performance. . The list goes on and on.
Hearn’s talent for promoting Joshua lies in the fact that very few sports stars of any generation have reached the commercial heights of Anthony Joshua. He’s there in the highest levels with the likes of LeBron James and Lionel Messi. Commercially, Hearn, along with Joshua’s own management company, 258, couldn’t have been more successful with Joshua as an in-demand commodity. So, why does Joshua seem depressed and depressed in recent interviews? What triggered his emotional monologue after losing to Oleksandr Usyk in the rematch? It seems the simple answer is respect.
Before his two fights with Usyk, Joshua would step up to the microphone and initiate child-friendly speeches that were carefully crafted and offered deeply precious things, such as the now-branded, “let’s go.” modest”. Joshua was a brand manager’s dream, hence commercial success, but the world he ran let him down. Like Joshua’s patented quote, Hulk Hogan’s healthy message, ‘Pray, take vitamins’, is finally thinned out by fans. Sometimes people get sick of the good guy, especially when he stops winning.
Boxing fans have long grown tired of Joshua’s dull and repetitive spells, and at the warm-up press conference for his upcoming bout against Jermaine Franklin, it seemed the former world champion. The world twice has left the PR drama at the door and delivered much more. of an edge. When Hearn asked him what motivates him, the London Olympic athlete replied, “money”. Anthony Joshua version one would never execute what could be construed as a crass response. He’ll certainly rave about his legacy and being a fighter, which is admirable, of course, but this version of Joshua looks like he’s played the good guy enough. Joshua sees his contemporaries like Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder behave the way they want and how much fans love them for their authenticity, and he wants to get in on the action. Even Hulk Hogan has to be the bad guy in the end.
Whether or not Anthony Joshua returns for a second time won’t ultimately depend on whether he’s a nice guy or a cranky bad guy outside of the ring; he will be judged on the results on the inside. If one really wants to play the devil’s advocate for Eddie Hearn’s handling of Anthony Joshua’s career, they’ll likely have to wait until after the next few months. If Joshua defeats Franklin and Dillian Whyte back-to-back, he’ll be instantly back to the world title, and the biggest fights of his career are still amazingly ahead. If he loses either bout, it’s likely to be the end of the road, and then, and only then, can the critics ask if Hearn is in a hurry with Joshua? It may seem like a ludicrous thought to reflect on what he has achieved, but if Joshua loses again, even Hearn has stated that his career is probably over. Anthony Joshua is thirty-three this year, and for heavyweights, that makes him childish. With his great moment in the ring after his second loss to Usyk, he certainly looks like a man who is feeling the heat at the pinnacle of his division and claims he has joining boxing later growing up and not participating in more amateur competitions alludes to a glaring lack of confidence in the skilled boxers in the division. He should have beaten Franklin and Whyte, but if he didn’t, and that was really the end, his career would be over without having to face Fury or Wilder at such a young age. This is still purely hypothetical, but the next few months are sure to be crucial in Anthony Joshua’s already curious career.
