Boxing: The Must Make Fight For 2019

Boxing: The Must Make Fight For 2019

This time last year the fights I most wanted to see in 2018 would undoubtedly have been Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder and the long-awaited all British grudge fight between Kell Brook and Amir Khan. Roll on 12 months and for both fights we are still waiting and the odds are this time next year we will still be waiting.

For Brook vs Khan much of my desire to see the fight has waned, tired of the waiting, the social media taunts and both fighters being not what they once were making the fight far less of an attraction now. I also think we all just have to accept it won’t happen.

Joshua and Wilder is completely different, a fully unified world heavyweight champion is still something I very much want to see in 2019. But sadly I just don’t see it happening. Boxing politics can get very tiring, and we have it in abundance here.

Terrence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr are for me the best two welterweights on the planet, a combined resume of 58-0 and in many ways they need each other. The 80’s gave us a couple of welterweight unification fights in the shape of Sugar Ray Leonard rallying to stop Thomas Hearns in one of the greatest fights in history. Then Donald Curry demolished Milton McCrory to leave no doubt as to who was the one true king at welterweight during their little era.

Crawford meeting Spence Jr would fit somewhere between those two fights. Crawford the WBO champion looks likely to meet Amir Khan next while Spence Jr finally resurfaces in March against Mikey Garcia in defence of his IBF welterweight title. Hopefully, should the pair emerge victorious serious talk will start to get the two together in a boxing ring. This is my must make fight for 2019, do I think it will happen probably not, but I live in hope.

Some of the other members of the FightPost team have made their picks:

Michael Richards: Anthony Joshua vs Deontay Wilder

Ben Gibson: Dillian Whyte vs  Oleksandr Usyk 

Josh Wooler: Errol Spence Jr vs Terrence Crawford

Keith Turrell: Errol Spence Jr vs Shawn Porter

Liam Lawer: Anthony Joshua vs Deontay Wilder

Matthew Dean: Josh Taylor vs Regis Prograis

Aidan O’Connor: Anthony Joshua vs Dillian Whyte

Myles Hutton: Deontay Wilder vs Tyson Fury 2

Dan McConnell: Vasyl Lomachenko vs Mikey Garcia 

Sina Latif: Anthony Joshua vs Deontay Wilder