Eddie Hearn has once again insisted that Anthony Joshua fought better opponents than Tyson Fury on his road to the top.
World heavyweight champion Fury has beaten Deontay Wilder twice and drawn with him once, as well as landing the first victory over Wladimir Klitschko in over 11 years to win the unified belts. Meanwhile, Joshua has beaten Klitschko and also had to get through Joseph Parker, Alexander Povetkin and Andy Ruiz Jr, among others, on his run.
Hearn promoted Joshua on his way to two unified world title reigns and is plotting his return and hopeful comeback in the title picture. And he feels that Joshua's CV is more impressive than Fury's in the grand scheme of things, given that they have both beaten Klitschko, who is arguably No.1 on both of their records.
"Tyson Fury calls everybody out and says everything, that's just not AJ's style," Hearn told Pro Boxing Fans. "His resume is in a different league to Tyson Fury. Tyson Fury has fought Wladimir Klitschko and Deontay Wilder, that's it in terms of elite heavyweights. I know Dillian Whyte was a good fight but I'm talking about the top, top guys consistently.
"He's always thrown in a couple of easy fights, whether it's Tom Schwarz, whether it's Pianeta, whether it's Sefer Seferi, Christian Hammer, all these guys. AJ, over the last whatever it is 10 fights, hasn't. Look, Tyson Fury is an outstanding fighter but Anthony Joshua is just not Tyson Fury. He's not going to go out and start slagging people off, getting in their face and calling them dossers and rabbits and gappy-teethed, it's just not his thing."
However, the mark against Joshua is that he has lost a number of his toughest fights. In contrast, Fury has never been beaten and many feel the one blemish on his record - the 2018 draw with Wilder - was a robbery on the scorecards, while his rival has lost three times in massive world title fights.
Joshua was first beaten in a shock stoppage by Andy Ruiz Jr in the summer of 2019 at Madison Square Garden. He came back to beat Ruiz before defending his belts against Kubrat Pulev, but lost a mandatory defence and immediate rematch to Oleksandr Usyk in his next outings when a fight with Fury fell by the wayside.
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