If Anthony Joshua wins, what happens next?
He is a global superstar. We’re free to fight who we want next. The first thing would be to take a voluntary defence against a decent name, probably in July time. A lot depends on how he wins, if it’s a 12 round war and it’s a tough fight I don’t think he’ll go again until September. If it’s an early win I’d be looking to get him out in July. It’s always my job to look forward but it’s difficult in this situation because you almost don’t want to curse yourself and start making plans until Saturday’s out the way. A lot of talk obviously about [Tyson] Fury after them two going backwards and forwards.
Maybe Joshua and Fury happens quicker than anticipated. It’s a fight where if Joshua beats Charles Martin I don’t think he has a problem taking the fight against Fury. It would make sense to do it early part of next year from a stadium perspective but sometimes you can’t wait on these fights.
But of course all eyes on Saturday fight.
But wouldn’t take be preferable to leave that till next year?
Probably but it probably would have been a preference to leave this fight till next year and we could have just defended the British and Commonwealth and maybe challenged for the European whatever. But this was the opportunity that arose and when it was there, you have to sit down and say, ‘Are we going to take this or not?’ and the answer was yes.
Anything can happen, you have take every opportunity as it comes.
What happens in July (if Joshua wins), would it be a stadium fight?
I think so.
The Olympic champion in the Olympic stadium?
Possibly. We’ve wanted to go back to Wembley. The Olympic stadium is a lovely story.
You could put James DeGale and Luke Campbell (Olympic gold medallists) on.
A few options there. I like that but again I’ve already had in my mind the dates when we’d go but again you just don’t know what kind of fight it’s going to be.
With what will happen to his life through victory, to go [early July] would probably mean two weeks off then back to camp. Can you imagine what’s going to happen if he wins? It’s going to be two weeks of solid media. He may just want to chill out, we’ll see.
I think early to mid July would be a target [for the next fight] if things went very well and very quickly.
And what happens if he loses?
If he loses, he goes away, licks wounds and comes back and defends his British and Commonwealth titles. It can happen. He’s fighting for the world heavyweight title. It would be shattering for him but fighters have had defeats early in their career and come back. I’ve said from the get go. I think it’s a 50-50 fight and I do. I think you’ve got two relatively experienced, talented, big punching heavyweights and I think when the atmosphere hits them… It’s not going to be ‘okay let’s just feel it out for six or seven rounds’. I think Martin would like to take the fight deep and let him get him into a rhythm.. I think Joshua has got to do exactly the opposite.
It’s not just us and Anthony Joshua that should be having our fingers crossed [that he wins]. It’s Sky, it’s you [Boxing News], it’s boxing fans. Because what this does, this is a game changer for British boxing. If he wins on Saturday night all of our lives and industry changes forever. Because he becomes certainly top three sportsmen in the UK, maybe the biggest.
So it’s massive for all of us. It doesn’t even matter if you’re a rival promoter, you should be hoping Anthony wins because it’s going to change everything.
How well do think it will do on pay per view?
I think the spread is 600,000 to a million. I don’t know… I like to be quite pessimistic on numbers so I get a nice surprise at the end. I thought the Dillian Whyte would 250-300,000 and it was more like four and a half. So we were hugely delighted with that. But then you think if that does four and a half, you think this undercard is as good if not better and he’s even bigger than ever, [maybe] six, seven, eight, nine… You’ve got to remember Fury-Klitschko did low 500s, this is bigger in my opinion. It’s in the UK for a start, the undercard is much stronger, Joshua rates much better than Fury.
Do you think this will outsell what Manny Pacquiao-Tim Bradley does in the US?
I think it will. Don’t forget we’re a lot cheaper. What are they, $60? Which is 50 quid, which is a lot of money. If we were 50 quid we certainly wouldn’t be doing 700,000 buys. I have no idea. I think the feeling is this could break records but I’m quite pessimistic. I look around 600-700,000 but who knows? All I know is you’re going to get value for money.
