Boxing has been on a surprisingly good run as far as making various major fights and title unification bouts that the fans want to see, so it’s only appropriate that we’ve been met with a harsh reality check that quite frequently, we get an undesired outcome.
A potential showdown between undefeated heavyweight champions Anthony Joshua (21-0, 20 KOs) and Deontay Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) is seemingly going to be pushed back to 2019, as the WBA have put their foot down as far as Joshua facing mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin (34-1, 24 KOs). A Wilder fight would be a unification of all four major belts, and that usually produces an exception for a champion to avoid facing the mandatory challenger next, but since negotiations have drawn out so long, the WBA has given Joshua a 24-hour deadline to sign and fight Povetkin.