Boxing guru Droog, what is your prediction?

***SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FIGHT!***



Strange fight. Strange card in fact. Hughie Fury actually produced a good performance. Okolie (who I don't mind as he is learning on the job but most boxing hard core fans hate) put in a cracking performance and looked excellent under new trainer Shane McGuigan.

As for the main event, I thought Joshua looked like a Wlad Klitschko clone. As in the version of Wlad who came back from a few losses and boxed behind the jab in a safety first style. It nearly went early in round three and a different ref might have stopped that fight when Pulev turned his back. But it rumbled on and although Joshua was winning the rounds, I thought Pulev was starting to come back into the fight from round seven. Joshua hit him with a lovely uppercut (not for the first time) and ended up closing the show in round nine. It was a cracking shot. But it came against an old man who was only really a top fifteen tier fighter by the time this fight happened. Pulev was once top five easily. What I took from the fight was that Joshua has been working hard to totally change his style. Good jab, movement and importantly some head movement. But he still goes backwards in a straight line when under attack. This is a big no no in boxing. More worrying was that he looks terrified when under pressure. And that is the crux of this drastic change in style. Like Wlad before him, they know he can't hold a shot at this level. Tyson Fury will exploit that and confuse him with ease. I really would like to see it happen but I would not be surprised if team Joshua make all the right noises but go in a different direction. They know beating Fury is a big ask so they will probably sit down and do some calculations. Financial ones. They will decide if taking two big money but losing fights against Fury next year will earn them as much as making a few (say five or six) defences against lesser opposition. Taking into account he could still lose against someone else but they'd still have their rematch safety clause. As of now, I think it might well happen.

Different times. The training camps modern fighters do nowadays take far more out of a fighter than what was happening even fifteen years ago let alone thirty or more. But the main reason the big fights take so long to happen is down to finances. Modern PPV events require big lead times to maximise the revenue in this new digital era. The contracts involved take a lot of sorting. Like anything in life, when big business gets involved it screws the sport. Football has to be the biggest example of that.

Usyk is mandatory for the WBO belt. He won't step aside and the WBO have already allowed Joshua a fair bit of leeway regarding this. Fury has already owned every important belt in boxing. He couldn't care less about whether all the belts are on the line or none are. Joshua camp claim they want to be undisputed so they want all the belts for the first fight at least. If they keep making noise about this, that's when you know that team Joshua don't fancy the fight. Ultimately money talks in boxing.

As I said previously, Joshua has more to lose because it is very unlikely he can beat Fury. Fury will be 100% up for it because it is a two fight deal against an opponent who is practically made for him style wise and it is mega money. Team Joshua will do the calculations and then decide. Right now I think there is an appetite to make it happen by both camps. But that could all change.

I like UFC but I kind of lost touch with it these past five years or so. I dip in now and then but haven't watched a card in well over a year or more. I used to watch TUF religiously so I knew most of the emerging talent. I think boxing has gotten so competitive over the last five years that it has left me few weekends where there wasn't a good card on. I will give it a go this weekend though.

Boxing is littered with ex champs who ended up financially and mentally broken after their careers ended. Not all of it down to greedy promoters or managers but some of the contracts I have seen are obscene. Things have definitely improved in that area. I don't think people realise how little most boxers actually takes home from their purse. You'd be surprised how little the majority of them get paid. I've known of a boxer defending an European belt as the main attraction on a televised card earning as little as £25,000. Once that is split up between training camp fees, manager, promoter and the tax man, the fighter is left with around £9000. That £9000 represents between four and six months earnings depending on how many times they fight in a year. If you only fight once that year you're better off on the dole. Having said that, I know of prospects coming through on good retainers and a weekly wage plus their fight purses. A lot depends on how you come through and who with.