Lennox Lewis thinks WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury should face each other in an immediate rematch, since IBF/WBA/WBO champion Anthony Joshua doesn’t want any part of fighting them. Lewis says that Joshua is “happy being protected” in his fights inthe UK, and he doesn’t want to come over to the U.S to take a tough fight.
Former heavyweight world champion Lewis (41-2-1, 32 KOs) doesn’t see the desire there on Joshua’s part to step up to fight the unbeaten Wilder (40-0-1, 39 KOs) and Fury (27-0-1, 19 KOs). Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn is picking all of his opponents for him, and putting him in with arguably less dangerous fighters like Carlos Takam, Joseph Parker, Alexander Povetkin and Eric Molina.
“I think they should have a rematch. Anthony Joshua can wait,” Lennox Lewis said to CompuBox TV. “He doesn’t want either of these guys. When he saw that fight, he’s like, ‘Wow, these guys can box,’ and now they’re going to do it again. He’s at a place in his career in boxing. So obviously he can make the decision he an make, and his decision is not to fight any of them at the moment,” Joshua said.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn maintains that Wilder is the one that he wants for his April 13 fight at Wembley Stadium in London, England. If Hearn can’t get Wilder to agree to the fight, then he wants Fury as his Plan-B, followed by Oleksander Usyk and Dillian Whyte. Hearn needs to pick a fighter that will help sellout the huge Wembley Stadium, but it’s believed that he’s not going to give Wilder and Fury serious offers to take the fight with Joshua. If Joshua is going to dodge Fury and Wilder for the time being, then he’s going to be left out in the cold, because the boxing public now expects the top three guys to face each other.
After Wilder fought Fury earlier this month on December 1, the boxing fans have become spoiled in wanting the best to face the best. That obviously can’t happen if Joshua isn’t going to fight either of them for whatever reason. The flat fee offers that Joshua is talking about wanting Wilder to agree to shows that it’s going to be next to impossible to make the fight unless the offer is in the $50 million range. Hearn’s $15 million flat fee for Wilder is so far off what the fight will likely make that it’s embarrassing. To make an offer like that shows a lot of courage on Hearn’s part. It’s no wonder that Wilder’s management hasn’t given Eddie the time of day.
“I think he wants Deontay. I don’t think he’ll [Joshua] come over here [United States] right now. I think he’s too happy in England being protected, and boxing in front of the British crowd,” Lewis said.
You hate to say that Joshua’s promoter Hearn is protecting him from the lion’s in the heavyweight division like Wilder and Fury, but it’s difficult to say otherwise when you see him being matched the way he is. Without question, Hearn should have matched Joshua against Wilder, Fury and Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz by now, but he’s not attempted to make those fights. Hearn points out that the 29-year-old Joshua is still early in his boxing career, and that he’s ahead of where Wilder was at when he had that many fights. The argument that fans have to counter that is Wilder didn’t have a promoter that was matching him against former IBF champion Charles Martin, an older Wladimir Klitschko and a vulnerable WBO champion Joseph Parker. The fighters that Joshua was given the chance to face due with the help of Hearn were guys that Wilder and Fury likely would have all beaten. Fury already beat Wladimir in 2015, and did a better job of it than Joshua.
“What a fantastic fight,” Lewis said about the Wilder vs. Tyson Fury fight. “I wasn’t disappointed one bit. A lot of drama in the fight. It was going one way, and then it was going the other way. Sometimes you didn’t know who was going to win. You definitely saw a lot of boxing from Tyson Fury’s side. You saw the power from Deontay’s side. They’re going to have another fight, so I’m happy about that. We’re going to have a chance to see it again, Lewis said.
It’s pretty important that Wilder and Fury do it again so that there’s closure. For them to walk away at this point to go fight Joshua, Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller or Dillian Whyte would be seen as a weak move by the boxing public. It might be okay for some fighters to walk away from a draw, but not for Wilder and Fury. Those two are made from a different set of cloth than the run of the mill fighter that might not want to tempt fate by going back for a rematch.
It’s got to be especially hard for Fury to want to take a second fight with Wilder, given that he was arguably knocked out in the 12th round by right-left combination from the 6’7′ Deontay. Incredibly, the referee Jack Reiss gave a count a count to an out-looking Fury. Even that had Lewis shocked, since he saw what a lot of boxing fans observed with Fury looking completely out cold. Lewis notes that there was some controversy with the way that referee Jack Reiss counted after Fury was dropped in the 12th, which some boxing fans was a slow count that enabled him to get up. Lewis doesn’t understand why the referee Reiss even gave a count in the first place, considering in many cases a fight would be stopped immediately if one of the fighters was seemingly knocked unconscious with both eyes closed like Fury was in round 12.
“There was a lot of different factors in that fight,” Lewis said about the Wilder vs. Fury fight. “The slow count [from referee Jack Reiss], the fact that the referee did the count in the first place, because when you see a guy get knocked down like that, especially in the last round and then laying there. Usually the referee waives it off, and says, ‘It’s done!’ This referee was counting, and I’m like, ‘Dude, he’s got his eyes closed,’ and then all of a sudden he’s like risen from the grave. He got up,” Lewis said about Fury.
Lewis brings up a very good point. What on earth was the referee thinking in giving a count to Fury in the 12th round? It’s lucky that Fury was able to get back up, because this could have ended badly for him if he was seriously hurt. The referee wasting valuable seconds giving a count to an unconscious-looking fighter could have had disastrous results. Fury is probably thankful the referee gave him a count, but if things had been different and he was seriously hurt, he might not have been happy with the fight not being stopped on the spot. It’ll be interesting to see who the referee is for the Wilder vs. Fury rematch. It is someone that will be patient and give Fury another count after he gets dropped hard and is laying on the canvas with both eyes closed or will the referee halt the fight to play it safe?
Joshua is reportedly saying that there’s a “50-50” chance that he fights Wilder on April 13, and that he’ll be “struggling to fill Wembley,” according to Michael Benson.
For Joshua to be saying that there’s a 50-50 chance for the Wilder fight taking place on April 13, it must mean that Hearn is moved off his stance of offering a flat fee to Deontay. If Hearn is ready to give Wilder close to the 50-50 split that he’s asking for, then there’s a chance the fight could happen on April 13. Wilder vs. Joshua would a great chance to fill Wembley Stadium to the brim with boxing fans. You can’t say the same about the tired rematch between Joshua and Dillian Whyte. If Hearn trots out Whyte for Joshua to fight on April 13, it could be the same effect as spraying repellent on the promotion. The boxing fans don’t want to see Joshua fight Whyte again when there are bigger names available like Wilder and Fury. Those are the guys that Hearn needs to be making an effort to sign for the fight. There will be time enough for Joshua to fight Whyte in the future in a stay busy fight or as a confidence booster if/when he loses to Wilder or Fury.