Anthony Joshua is a 26-year-old Olympic gold medalist and despite only 3 years of professional boxing experience he’s one of the sports brightest stars.
His following in the U.K. has surpassed established fighters such as Tyson Fury and Amir Khan.
This past weekend Joshua sold out London’s 02 Arena in under 2 minutes and he put on a show by capturing his first major title (IBF Heavyweight Title) by 2nd round KO. Throw in his mainstream media appeal and all signs point at boxing mega-star.
Joshua’s greatest advantage is the presence of a true adversary. The United States has a heavyweight world champion of their own, Deontay Wilder.
Wilder’s size, KO power and boisterous personality make him the perfect opponent for Joshua. Joshua currently has a record of 16-0 with all of his victories by knockout, while the 30-year-old Wilder is 36-0 with 35 victories by KO.
Does that sound like a fight that would sell?
The only thing stopping it from happening is Joshua’s age, promoters are hesitant to stop the money train early, and the usual amount of boxing greed.
Al Haymon believes Wilder is the A-side in every fight he takes and if he defeats Alexander Povetkin in Russia he’ll have an even stronger case for huge money moving forward.
Joshua’s team have a few big fights in their sights as well. Tyson Fury is the perfect heel for Joshua and if he successfully defeats Klitschko again it’d be the biggest fight in Britain this century.
Eventually, these two fighters will split the major titles in the heavyweight division and they’ll have to turn to each other for unification bouts. Will that be in 2016 or 2017, unlikely, but they’ll eventually be faced with the challenge and if boxing big wigs are smart they’ll jump all over it.
Many people feel a GGG vs Canelo fight could be the next “super fight” but even those two hard punchers couldn’t hold a candle to such a great heavyweight matchup.