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Nick Parkinson
British boxing will never produce a star as bright as Anthony Joshua again, according to Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn.
Joshua (28-3, 25 KOs), 34, challenge English rival Daniel Dubois (21-2, 20 KOs), 27, at Wembley Stadium in front of an expected 96,000 crowd, the highest crowd ever for a boxing event in the U.K., and if he wins will join a small group of fighters who won the world heavyweight title on three separate occasions that includes Vitali Klitschko, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Michael Moorer and Muhammad Ali.
Joshua has attracted huge stadium crowds in Britain during a professional career that launched following his Olympic gold medal triumph in 2012.
Sponsorship deals have made Joshua one of boxing’s biggest earners in recent years, and he is 16th in the Forbes list of the world’s highest-paid athletes for 2024, with earnings of $83 million, $8m of which was from sponsors such as DAZN, Hugo Boss, Suntory, Under Armour.
Hearn insists no one will eclipse Joshua, who has revived his career following three defeats in title fights and ruled as world champion from 2016 to 2019 and then from 2019 to 2021.
An even bigger fight than Saturday awaits Joshua if he beats Dubois, against English rival and fellow former champion Tyson Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs), 36, who faces Ukrainian Oleksandr Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs), 37, in a rematch on Dec. 21.
Hearn, who has promoted Joshua all his pro career, told a call with boxing writers: “I get the question a lot, who’s the next AJ, and in all honesty you’re never going to see one. AJ won gold at Olympics in London and had a tremendous start to profile building, and he’s been a phenomenon that will never be repeated in my view.
“We have got a good crop coming through. Johnny Fisher is a rough diamond, someone who is crossing over without Olympic background and is crossing over to mainstream media already. Pat Brown, Conner Tudsbury, Dalton Smith, it will be interesting to see them come through, Ben Whittaker is definitely someone who could look good and Conor Benn’s return is going to be massive.
“Outside of AJ and Fury, Conor Benn’s profile is miles bigger than all of them. We have to keep building stars but I don’t think we will have another one close to Anthony Joshua.
“If you go back to the days of [James] DeGale, [Kell] Brook, [Amir] Khan, they didn’t sell out Tottenham or Wembley. It’s not that we don’t have the stars anymore, it’s just that we compare it to AJ and Fury. But AJ and Fury are a phenomenon.”
The last time an event of Saturday’s magnitude took place at a British venue was when Tyson Fury’s stoppage win over Derek Chisora in a world heavyweight title defence was watched by nearly 60,000 across north London at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in December 2022.
Since Fury’s last world title win, boxing’s landscape has shifted.
Big fights are no longer exclusively at the regular venues in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York City, London, Manchester and Tokyo. Many of boxing’s biggest nights are now in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia following the Gulf nation’s swift emergence as a boxing superpower.
Riyadh Season — an annual state-managed sports and entertainment festival that attracts sponsorships from some of the region’s most prominent companies — starts in October in Saudi Arabia’s capital. Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, is the key figure in determining what fights get staged at Riyadh events in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
However, with Saudi Arabia hosting more big events, it means fights that would normally have taken place at U.K. venues, are now happening in Riyadh on bills that feature fights good enough to headline events in their own right.
Riyadh Season has also taken the shows beyond Saudi Arabia; first in Los Angeles last month, in a show headlined by Terence Crawford, and now this weekend. Hearn admits events in Saudi Arabia have led to his company Matchroom working on a refresh of how they produce boxing events in the U.K. in future.
“We’re a funny lot [in boxing] because with the Riyadh Season I see some of the responses saying ‘I don’t think Oct. 12 is that great a show.’ We [Matchroom] can’t compete with Riyadh Season, it’s something we’ve never seen before,” Hearn said.
“Every fighter right now is looking to be a part of Riyadh season and land that big pay cheque so it’s difficult to get those fights to headline in the UK and purses have gone through the roof for a select group of fighters. Unfortunately, that select few and their managers know what he got and what he got and say ‘well he got that for fighting in Riyadh’ but it is a little bit different in Birmingham or Manchester. It’s quite a difficult time.
“We’re going to look at the schedule from 2025 and do things a bit differently, it could be the fights or the way we do shows, the type of fights. We are never going to compete with Riyadh Season in terms of the depth of the cards. So we have got to add something fresh, the types of fights and not getting talked into something by a manager, agent or adviser about an easy one. It doesn’t work like that anymore. Also, the length of shows, the speed of the shows and timings. It’s time to freshen up the product.”
There are a few potential match-ups for stadium events in the U.K. in 2025: Benn vs. Chris Eubank Jr (if welterweight Benn succeeds in his legal battle to get his ban lifted); Joshua vs. Fury/Usyk, or Dubois vs. Fury; and possibly the second installment of Hearn vs. his rival British promoter Frank Warren, which would see five fighters from each promotional stable face each other to decide the best out of five.
Joshua Buatsi, who fights Willy Hutchinson for the WBO interim world light heavyweight title in perhaps the biggest other fight on Saturday at Wembley, insists Riyadh Season has been a positive development for boxing, even if it means his career-defining fights could take place in Saudi Arabia rather than his native London.
“We are seeing fights that we would never have seen get made and promoters are working together now,” Buatsi told ESPN.
“I never would’ve thought I would see some promoters laughing and joking together like I saw at ringside recently. So what ever His Excellency [Turki Alalshikh] is doing, it’s working. Fights we want to see are happening and that’s the angle I’m looking at it. It’s good for boxing. Rather than fights always being in Saudi Arabia they have just done one in Los Angeles, there’s this one in London and there’s talk of one in China so really we should be optimistic.”
Warren, who promotes Dubois and has been a boxing promoter since the 1980s, agrees with Buatsi.
“When I was younger you had the Rumble in the Jungle, the Thriller in Manilla, the Drama in the Bahamas [all featuring Muhammad Ali] and Mike Tyson fought [Buster Douglas] in Japan,” Warren told ESPN.
“Big fights have always taken place all over the world because the fighters go there for the money. For the UK fans it’s good because the fights are taking place earlier in the evening, rather than at 4 or 5 in the morning when they are in Vegas. And we are still doing big fights in the UK, and you’ve got two Riyadh Season fights taking place in LA and London within weeks.”