Duke4life831 wrote:The handling of Joshua/Wilder/Fury is everything wrong with Boxing and especially HW boxing. HW boxing was handed a golden goose and they just threw it away.
You had 3 undefeated guys all in their prime and they checked off all the boxes you want when hyping a division. You had an American and 2 British fighters. You had the scariest KO specialist since maybe Tyson, you had the uber skilled guy and the guy with a good mix of both. Personality wise they were all different, all with different kinds of backgrounds. You even had black and white.
What do we get, we get an amazing and very rememberable and talked about first fight between 2 of them that goes to a controversial draw. Amazing first step to get HW boxing talked about again. But either than an immediate rematch or one of them fighting Joshua, all 3 just go their separate ways. What a waste of a golden opportunity.
Say what you want about the UFC, they do not have this problem at all. If anything the have the complete opposite problem now where they rely too much on these dream/money fights. Could you imagine Conor and Khabib just kept fighting but the UFC never made those 2 fight.
The whole situation is made easy to bare when you consider that all three of those guys are pretty **** at boxing. HW just isn't a crucible for real talent, so losing head-to-heads between those three isn't a huge loss. HW might have the sensation of being the big boys but's ultimately low quality.
Whereas, the fact that contract disputes have kept guys like Ward, Mikey, and Crawford out of top competition is way more tragic. None of Fury, Wilder, or Joshua have a fraction of the talent any of those other three have. Hell, I'd take a single Billy Joe Saunders vs GGG or Canelo fight over a round robin of trilogies between Fury, Wilder, and Joshua. Or Mikey against Crawford.