THE Anthony Joshua juggernaut rolls on. On Saturday night, in front of 20,000 roaring fans, Joshua cooly dismantled America’s Dominic Breazeale over seven rounds. For a boxer who is, let’s remember, only 17 fights into his professional experience, he’s doing the business in the ring. And he’s doing real business outside the ropes.
As well as selling out the O2 arena, his fights since boxing Dillian Whyte in December 2015 have been on pay-per-view. If he’s watched by around 500,000 households, that generates around £8.5 million. The gate at the O2, we’re told, raises about £3 million and on top of that will be money from international television and sponsorship.
Joshua himself clearly appeals to big companies. Under Armour, Lucozade and Beats for example were prominent during this fight week. Those are major brands and major endorsements infrequently associated with British boxing. “You could say [an Anthony Joshua fight generates] 13, 14, 15 million pounds,” promoter Eddie Hearn told Boxing News. That would be money generated by the event as a whole, to be shared amongst the relevant players. “That’s revenue, you’ve got to take out Breazeale, Sky – we [Matchroom promotions] don’t get £16.95 and 20 percent of that is VAT by the way, so it’s £14 net. He’s in a position now, there’s not many fighters that earn the kind of money that Joshua does and there’s a very select club and that club is Pacquiao, Mayweather, Canelo and Joshua. Basically that’s it. I’m talking multi-millions every time they fight. Whereas the others are earning ones and so forth. But away from that is the endorsement side also, there’s no fighter that is earning what he’s earning via endorsements.”
But the promoter added, “He don’t even really think about it. This is a guy who’s got millions in the bank and basically lives with his mum in a flat in north London. The mentality is brilliant. And that’s why I’m so confident in him. I said to him after this fight, go away and just be a young man. Everything is just regime, regime, appearances, sponsorship days… That’s one of my fears about this fight particularly, that he hasn’t had that rest. Camp has been hard. He has been very tired and it hasn’t been perfect but he’s a pro. The problem is after the Charles Martin fight, he didn’t train for four or five weeks, but he had sponsorship requests, award ceremonies, up and down the country, internationally all the time. So by the time he started his camp he was shattered. It’s been hard graft. The plan now is, four or five weeks, just do nothing. Just go and enjoy yourself.”
Joshua isn’t expected to fight again until early November. It could be New Zealand’s Joseph Parker who occupies the mandatory position to challenge Joshua. “Our mandatory I think won’t be called until November 20, he could have a voluntary or we could have the mandatory and fight Parker,” Hearn continued. “It’s a good fight, you’ve got a young hungry heavyweight, a good heavyweight who can punch. I think it’s a good fight.”
