On Saturday night at the O2 Arena in London, former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua scored a titanic 7th-round KO of Robert Helenius. The sheer violence of the finish instantly pushed the 33-year-old heavyweight back into the consciousness of boxing fans worldwide.
He’s got some work to do before reaching the desired place of relevancy, but wins like this will only help his cause.
In case you missed Joshua’s win, here is the decisive blow that pushed his record to 26-3 with 23 KOs. Joshua posted this to his social media accounts on Saturday evening.
Per Jonathan Cohen, an analytics expert from Bedrock PR using data from ListenFirst, a social media analytics firm, Joshua added 27,590 new followers on social media between August 12- 13, 2023, with the followers coming primarily from TikTok.
There were 148,192 Tweets mentioning Joshua over the weekend (August 12-13).
There were 129,054 engagements around the social media posts Joshua shared during that span. His best performing posts was a TikTok video showing Helenius KO which got 41,849 engagements.
After the fight, Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom, detailed the three-fight plan he has in mind for his potentially resurgent heavyweight. After back-to-back losses to Oleksandr Usyk, Joshua has now won two fights in a row. He scored a unanimous-decision win over Jermaine Franklin in April.
Hearn was asked about rumors concerning a Joshua vs. Deontay Wilder fight in Saudi Arabia.
“That’s the fight we want,” Hearn said during the Joshua-Helenius post-fight interview. “We have a three-fight plan: Robert Helenius (it was supposed to be Dillian Whyte), Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury. That’s the ambition of the team.”
Here is a look at the post-fight interview with Joshua and Hearn.
According to Hearn, Joshua’s team is eyeing a January clash with Wilder. Confirmation of Joshua’s intentions to face Wilder sent some shockwaves through social media, with many chiming in with thoughts on the potential heavyweight clash.
Former champion and boxing analyst Paul Malignaggi doesn’t believe Joshua deserves a fight with Wilder after his performance against Helenius.
Many criticized Joshua for taking too much punishment against a journeyman heavyweight like Helenius. While Joshua finished the fight emphatically, his nose had been bloodied, and he seemed to struggle to close the distance against Helenius before scoring the one-punch KO.
Wilder knocked out Helenius in the first round when the two met in October 2022. Wilder seemed to have an easier time with Helenius, making it appear he’d have an edge in a matchup with Joshua. However, styles make fights and this sort of scenario doesn’t always play out simplistically.
If Joshua and Wilder meet, and the former is victorious, he would have as much momentum as anyone to push for a long-awaited meeting with Fury.
As Wilder represents a big hurdle, getting a fight signed between Joshua and Fury might be the toughest task. Fury is set to face former UFC heavyweight champion and current Professional Fighters League heavyweight Francis Ngannou in October in Saudi Arabia.
Assuming Fury wins as expected, a fight with Joshua would seemingly be the most lucrative next step. It is sensible to expect a Fury-Joshua clash selling out Wembley Stadium or another large venue in the United Kingdom.
However, in boxing, the most logical bout is rarely made–at least not on time. Perhaps promoters of tops heavyweights will follow the lead of the lightweight division and begin to make the bigger fights sooner rather than later.
Joshua claimed his back was sore from “carrying the heavyweight division to the top.”
That might be a stretch at this point.
Still, his KO win and Hearn’s public acknowledgment of an intriguing three-fight plan stirred conversation around the heavyweight division–which has been lacking as YouTubers and the lighter weight classes have been the significant needle movers of late within the sweet science.
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