Joshua must beat Franklin to save his promoter's grumbling business
Earlier this month Joshua Buatsi became the latest fighter to walk out on Matchroom and join forces with a new promotional outfit, penning a long-term deal to fight exclusively on Boxxer's Sky Sports platform.
And upon doing so, the light-heavyweight contender couldn't resist a parting shot at Eddie Hearn.
'Matchroom promised me a world title shot over and over again,' Buatsi said. '"Beat Ricards Bolotniks and you'll get it." Then it was "beat Craig Richards and you'll get it". But there were always excuses about writing to the WBA and then it never happened.
'I wanted to avoid this topic too but Eddie came out and said I turned down the [Dmitry] Bivol fight for £1million. We had a conversation in confidence that he went public with but he only publicised half of the sentence.'
After Hearn claimed he had passed up a world-title shot against Bivol before leaving his stable, Buatsi felt obliged to provide his version of events at his official Boxxer unveiling, while also twisting the knife with a brutal assessment of Matchroom's broadcasting deal with streaming giants DAZN.
'[Hearn] left out all the caveats they wanted included; the contract extensions and extra fights with Matchroom,' he continued.
'I took those unmentioned extras as two or three more years on DAZN, two or three more years of no publicity and nobody seeing my fights.
'I thought I might win a world title on a channel that hardly anybody has access to, let alone watches.'
Hearn has since retaliated by insisting Buatsi was never privy to DAZN's viewing figures and that he has been 'fed a load of bulls***', but the fact is he is not the only top fighter to turn their back on him and DAZN over the past year.
Former world champions Joseph Parker and Liam Smith both parted company with Matchroom in 2022, as did cruiserweight hopeful Chris Billam-Smith, while in the most well-documented split of the lot, WBO cruiserweight champion Lawrence Okolie also cut ties with Hearn and now remains in a legal dispute with his former promoter.
To rub salt in the wounds after Buatsi's scathing DAZN assessment, this week Okolie has taken aim at Hearn amid their ongoing legal battle, branding him 'malicious, bitter and jealous'.
'Let him say and do what he wants, I'm very happy with how my life is going and now I have to just focus on winning,' he said.
'Me and him have chats because we have an ongoing situation behind the scenes that maybe I am not allowed to talk too much on. But the way he acts personally is very different. He's very malicious, bitter, jealous as well.
'And for someone who has been brought up in such a great position and has done so much in terms of his own life, the way he acts on a personal level is very vindictive.'
In Hearn's defence, neither Okolie or Buatsi generated much interest while with Matchroom, even during their long-running broadcast partnership with Sky Sports. He has hardly lost two of his greatest draws.
The same can be applied to the likes of Parker, Smith and Billam-Smith. Three talented fighters, no doubt, yet in terms of putting bums on seats and flogging pay-per-view numbers, none of the aforementioned five will be missed.
While it can perhaps be argued that one of Hearn's jobs as a promoter is to increase their marketability, what could he have done about Okolie's awkward, non-fan friendly style? What could he have done about Buatsi's injury problems and inactivity?
He certainly won't be losing any sleep over their departures from a financial standpoint. Nevertheless, in Okolie he has let arguably the No 1 cruiserweight in the world slip through his fingers, with even more fruitful opportunities on the horizon at heavyweight, too. And there is a feeling that Buatsi is only just entering his prime years, while he has two lucrative domestic options on the table in Dan Azeez and Anthony Yarde.
Both men deciding the grass is greener on the other side at Boxxer, and taking a swipe while doing so, is the true worry for Hearn and Co. And taking that into account, he desperately needs his two biggest commercial stars to bounce back in style this year.
Nigeria born former champion Anthony Joshua and Conor Benn endured miserable 2022s for entirely contrasting reasons. Joshua's setback came in the ring, at the hands of the masterful Oleksandr Usyk for a second time in September. Benn, meanwhile, failed two drug tests in the lead-up to his mega-fight with Chris Eubank Jr in October and is the subject of an ongoing UKAD investigation.
Despite his consecutive defeats to Usyk, Joshua remains a global attraction and can thrust himself back into the world-title picture by getting past Jermaine Franklin in style next weekend.
Ticket sales for that comeback fight at The O2 have been a little tougher to flog than usual for Hearn, but one knockout has the power to change that. Victory over Franklin and suddenly AJ is knocking on the door for a British blockbuster against Tyson Fury again after the latter's failed undisputed talks with Usyk.
When at the top of his game and brimming with confidence, Joshua is Hearn's star man by some stretch and, for that very reason, getting back to winning ways is essential for both the ex-heavyweight champion and his promotional team in equal measure.
Unfortunately for Benn, his redemption mission is not as simple as knocking someone out in the ring. After being cleared by the WBC, the 26-year-old is free to return to action on foreign soil this summer, with Hearn desperate to rearrange his grudge match against Eubank.
With a pair of positive drug tests hanging over him, though, Benn is still facing a potential two-year ban in the UK, which would prove a disastrous outcome for all parties.
