A while back, news came telling us that Sky Sports won the rights to the August 20 rematch fight between Oleksandr Usyk and Anthony Joshua in Saudi Arabia; this after securing the rematch with a huge £28 million bid. And today Sky Sports out out an article again announcing the big fight. But we fans still await the pay-per-view price the fight will carry.
Why confirmation of the fee fans will have to pay was not included in the press release is your guess. Fans had to pay £24.95 for the first Usyk-Joshua fight back in September of last year, and it is hoped there will not be an increase in this, a hefty enough price as it is, for the rematch. Again, we await official confirmation.
Joshua recently surprised plenty of people by leaving Sky Sports and signing a lucrative deal with DAZN. It is now understood that DAZN will begin televising Joshua’s fights after the Usyk return. As per a news article from Yahoo! Sports, Joshua, who signed a “long-term global partnership” with DAZN, is set to have his next ten fights televised by DAZN. As to whether or not Joshua will actually have another ten fights, well, that’s an interesting question.
Plenty of people feel Usyk will repeat his win over Joshua next month, and it will be interesting to see where AJ goes from here is he does indeed suffer a third career defeat.
Joshua fought for nine years on Sky Sports and now, for one more fight, his relationship with them will remain. For old-school boxing fans, it would have been great if the big rematch had been won by BBC, with it then maybe even going out on “free” TV. But the folks at Sky Sports have deep pockets and the closest bid to rival them came from DAZN.
Sky Sports can expect to pull in a huge number of pay-per-view buys with Usyk-Joshua II though – no matter the Box-Office price. This is the biggest heavyweight fight of the year and fans want to see if Joshua can dig deep and come back and win, becoming a three-time heavyweight champion.
Will we fight fans have to shell out £24.95 for the fascinating return fight? Or could it be £29.95? Or maybe even higher still? We’ll know soon enough but we should really know already, shouldn’t we.