Quote Originally Posted by Primo Carnera View Post
Quote Originally Posted by PaulG View Post
To me what should happen is obvious:

1. Joshua fights Parker in Spring - three of the four titles unified by an undefeated winner (will be joshua easily IMO)
2. Winner of fight 1 (Joshua) then fights Wilder in summer with two undefeated fighters slugging it out to be undisputed heavyweight champ and the firs man to hold all 4 belts simultaneously. Mega fight, mega money.
3. Autumn 2018/ Spring 2019 winner of fight 2 (the undisputed, undefeated heavyweight champion) then takes on the lineal undefeated champion Tyson Fury. This would be the first time in history that there is a fight between two undisputed, undefeated heavyweight champions and will be even bigger than fight 2.

Obviously, Fury will need to get fit and then have a couple of tune up fights to make fight 3 happen - and he will have to win both of these easily to make this work but if he can do it then what a set of fights this would be. Rating the boxers compared to history or not it will in time go down as a legacy of great fights for the era. 4 undefeated world champions fighting each other one after the other to determine who is the best. it has never happened before and it may never happen again.

It will make money, it will make history and it will make the fans happy.

The only logical thing to do IMO.
Sounds good, and I’m being devil’s advocate here, but why does Wilder have to wait till the summer?
Business reasons. Wilder brings less money to the table than Joshua so it makes sense to have a unification fight for all 4 titles in the USA once there are no more world titles out there. There is more money in a total unification fight than if Parker still has one of the titles.

It would work if Wilder fought Parker and Joshua and him came together with two titles each - but I doubt that a Wilder Parker fight would pay Parker enough and it would also mean Joshua (and Hearn) missing out on a pay day. Since a Joshua fight will make Parker more money than a Wilder fight then it makes logical sense to go this way round - but Parker could choose to fight Wilder if he wanted.

IMO both Joshua and Wilder spark Parker without any problems, but since Parker is also unbeaten the format works whoever wins or loses at any stage because we will still emerge with an unbeaten unified champion to fight the unbeaten lineal champion (Fury) in the final fight. There would be much less money in it all if that person was Parker though. Joshua brings the most money to the table, then Wilder then Parker. Fury is the wildcard but the setup only works if he is the last fight anyway. He is lineal champion so the others have to fight off to face him (for max money effect I am talking here - not necessarily because he deserves it).