After the megafight is before the megafight: Anthony Joshua had barely finished the eagerly awaited duel with Joseph Parker in Cardiff when he turned his attention to the next, even bigger goal. The warring Deontay Wilder has to come here to make history – and it should go fast.
“Put Wilder in the ring and I’ll kill him,” Joshua said immediately after the never-endangered win over Parker.
The 28-year-old Englishman now holds the titles of the WBA, IBF and WBO as well as the rather insignificant IBO. All he needs now is the WBC belt to become the first boxer since 1999 to become the so-called “undisputed champion” (undisputed world champion or champion of all classes) in the premier class, the heavyweight.
For this, the warring American Deontay Wilder has to face his fists, the adversity on the part of the WBC, after he had declared in an interview that he would like to have a dead man in his battle statistics (40-0-0, 39 K.O.).
“A little education wouldn’t have hurt him,” said Barry Hearn, the father of Joshua’s promoter Eddie. “It’s a terrible thing to say, and I’m sure he’ll regret it, but he’s just trying to be famous.”
Despite his escapades, Wilder is and remains the Joshua Clan’s next goal. According to Barry Hearn, talks with the American and his team could begin as early as next week.
“2018 is the year to unite the belts. We are on this path. Now is not the time to sit back,” Joshua said.
Promoter Eddie Hearn supports his protégé and also presses on the pace: “It must happen in 2018, otherwise we will have some major problems with the compulsory defences.
If the protagonists of both camps cannot agree on a fight, Tyson Fury would also be available as an alternative. The British ex-champion, who once surprisingly defeated Wladimir Klitschko, can hope to get his boxing licence back after a two-year doping ban has expired.
Since his triumph against Klitschko in Düsseldorf in November 2015, however, he has not been in the ring. Of course, that’s no problem for Fury. “There can only be one. I’m the real king, and I think people saw that tonight,” the 29-year-old tweetted.
Against Parker, who suffered his first defeat in the 25th fight, Anthony Joshua did not have to push his performance to the limit, but he was in the ring for the first time after winning 20 knockouts over the full distance.
Unlike his spectacular masterpiece against Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley eleven months ago, AJ offered a cool, tactical fighting style against Parker and hardly got into trouble. $17 million in fees for winning 21 professional battles.