When Fury tries to lure Joshua into the ring afterwards for a face-off, Joshua says he has other things on his mind.
“I was there on a scouting mission. I wanted to see if this is the guy I want to fight, right? So, I was there to see what was going to happen, how he was doing, and I saw good things, and I saw bad things,” Joshua told Mr. Verzace in Ring Magazine.
It’s crazy how true Joshua’s breakup feels. He looks at a young man who has just crawled effortlessly through a twelve-round tournament against a complete non-threat and treats it like a deep, philosophical game of chess in which he “saw good things and bad things.”
Good stuff? What are the good things? Fury looked exactly like what he was: a middle-aged fighter long out of work who completely lacked the explosive pulling ability that used to make him so elite. Makhmudov is the definition of a home-level fighter, a swordsman who can be beaten by any legitimate player in the top fifteen, let alone the top division.
The fact that Fury couldn’t, or couldn’t, get him out of there tells you everything you need to know about where his mind and powers are right now.
“I would have preferred to see a suspension,” Joshua said.
Joshua saying he “would have preferred to see a suspension” and noting the lack of “intent to try to hurt him” is the understatement of the century. He carries a bright, neon-lit landing sign as if it were Fury’s little choice. Anyone with eyes could see Fury in action.
It makes you wonder if Joshua is just trying to be too polite, or if he’s so programmed that he can’t just state the obvious: the version of Fury that dominated this division is over.
“I didn’t see any intention of trying to hurt Makhmudov,” Joshua said.
Joshua is a great company, and he knows that completely trashing a product kills the rate of pay-per-view purchases before contracts are signed. If he goes out there and tells the public that Fury is completely shot and washed, he’s undermining the entire value of their big domestic conflict. Keeping it vague about “good and bad” keeps the intrigue alive and protects the box office.
AJ has always had that heavy, matter-of-fact way of processing things, almost as if he were reading note cards in his mind. He often has difficulty analyzing things dynamically on the fly, which is why his experiments can come across as basic and undifferentiated. Instead of seeing a guy working hard physically and losing his mind, Joshua just sees it as a checklist: did he win? Yes. Did you stop him? No.
It’s a mix of corporate protectionism and a real lack of critical analytical thinking. He can’t, or won’t, realize that Fury was wrestling a guy who has no business going twelve rounds with an elite heavyweight.
“Fury is just another number,” AJ said. I don’t mind him at all. He is no more than anyone.”
That is the one moment when the corporate safe slipped, and the real, unanointed Joshua came out.
When he says “Fury is just another number,” he strips away all the hype, promotional makeup, and mythic status that has surrounded Fury for years. That’s the line of a fighter who looked across the ring at that screening machine, saw a middle-aged guy working against a limited opponent, and saw that the boogeyman was gone.
For a long time, Fury held this untouchable boxer in British boxing, but that match with Makhmudov clearly broke Joshua’s illusion. That “He is not above man” is the most important part. It shows that Joshua finally sees him as a human opponent who can be defeated instead of an invincible heavyweight champion. Even if Joshua’s overall analysis is basic, that particular realization is a major shift in thinking ahead of their fight.
