Eddie Hearn knows a good line when it is thrown at him and he was lightning quick to respond when asked to compare his fast-rising heavyweight Anthony Joshua with Frank Bruno at comparable stages of their careers. A fight between them, he proclaimed, would not last “a couple of rounds”.
He meant no disrespect to the former, much-loved world champion (promoters tend to talk in startling assertions of faith), but, before Joshua’s 15th and toughest assignment – against the unbeaten south Londoner Dillian Whyte at the O2 Arena in London on 12 December – Hearn put the case for his man being bigger and better than Bruno at that juncture of his career.
Bruno’s 15th opponent was Scott Le Doux, a gnarled American survivor who once went three rounds with a post-Rumble George Foreman and who detained the Londoner for seven minutes and 35 seconds before a battering and cuts forced his retirement – for good – after 50 fights.
Before that, Bruno had feasted on a succession of old, small, fat or plain petrified dancing partners. But, like Joshua, he was immensely popular, every mother’s son, a lovable hulk of a brain-cell destroyer.
“I think you have to say he is the biggest star in British boxing right now,” Hearn said of Joshua, after he and Whyte faced off in London on Tuesday to set the scene for their battle over the vacant British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles.
“Who would you say is bigger? This is a guy where my mum is down the tennis club and all the old ladies are going: ‘I watched that Anthony Joshua, ooh he’s lovely.’ When he gets in the ring and he’s finished, everyone is open-mouthed. People who have never come to any other shows are there. They’re like: ‘He’s so likeable, says all the right things.’
“This is the difference between him and Bruno. Bruno was a good fighter but I don’t believe people looked at Bruno at this stage and were thinking: ‘He could rule the division.’ But if you don’t do it about Anthony Joshua you don’t know your boxing. Can you imagine, after 14 fights, Joshua against Frank Bruno? I don’t mean to be disrespectful to Frank, but it wouldn’t go a couple of rounds. Frank was a good fighter, but Josh is so fast, so powerful. There’s something in him, too. On one hand he’s nice as pie. But today it was personal.”
And, for the first time in his professional career, Joshua did look mildly riled by an opponent who not only has never lost, amateur or pro, but who beat the Watford heavyweight in Joshua’s first amateur bout.
“Listen, he might make a mistake, get chinned and get knocked out. It happened to Lennox Lewis. It happened to Mike Tyson. It’s happened to all good heavyweights. But what we’ve seen in the gym is that he’s got a great chin.”
Since Joshua won Olympic gold in London three years ago, he has spent less time dismissing his 14 professional opponents than he might have done sparring in a single gym session. In his last outing, the over-hyped Scot Gary Cornish lasted a minute and 37 seconds. Before that, an assembly line of opponents had come and gone like nervous waiters: the experienced American Kevin Johnson (4:22), the anonymous Raphael Zumbano Love (4: 21), Jason Gavern (7:21), veteran Michael Sprott (1:26), Denis Bakhtov (4:00), Konstantin Airich (7:16), brave old warhorse Matt Skelton (5:33), Matt Legg (1:23), Hector Alfredo Avila (2:14), Dorian Darch (3:51), Hrvoje Kisicek (4:38), Paul Butlin (3:50) and Emanuele Leo (2:47).
Whyte has hardly risked his whiskers, either, but he brings enough menace to make Joshua’s 15th fight a good deal more uncertain than was Bruno’s.
