He might have lost his belts to Oleksandr Usyk, but Johnny Nelson still thinks Anthony Joshua has changed the face of boxing in a way Tyson Fury couldn’t.
It’s been a busy week of Joshua chat, with former super middleweight hardman Carl Froch outlining why he thinks Joshua lost those fights and saying AJ overachieved in his career.
Speaking to Simon Jordan and Spencer Oliver on TalkSport, former cruiserweight champion Nelson agrees with that sentiment.
“A lot of the [AJ] criticism is unfair because you’ve got to remember where he came from. I think he has actually overachieved with the limited experience he has as a professional and amateur fighter. He started boxing at 18 years old.”
The conversation moved on to legacy, and Nelson credits Joshua with having changed the fight game commercially, .
“Looking at the commercial level, he is a PRs dream. The money he has brought in away from boxing [is incredible.]
The companies that want to get involved, boxing never had that before, because there was always the shadow over it that one individual benefited.
Now, he’s changed that so, regardless of how good you think he is or isn’t, he’s opened the doors for more financial gain for fighters coming through. Tyson Fury, even though he’s the better boxer, doesn’t command that sort of deal.”
All this said, commercial deals and amateur experience aren’t the concern of most fight fans. Instead, they’d rather see the British heavyweights gloved up and battling it out for supremacy inside the squared circle.