The Heavyweight Scene: Joshua-Pulev, Adam Kownacki, Daniel Dubois and More

Poland-born, Brooklyn-raised Adam Kownacki makes his 10^th appearance at Barclays Center on Saturday. The undefeated Kownacki (20-0, 15 KOs) opposes Robert Helenius in the main go of a card with three other heavyweight fights. Kownacki, who has cultivated an avid following at Barclays, is rough around the edges but doesn’t figure to have too much trouble with Helenius, a 36-year-old Finn who ran out of gas and was stopped in the eighth round by Gerald Washington in his last significant fight.

Good heavyweights have always been a prized commodity and that is seemingly truer now then ever. And Bob Arum, the sport’s indefatigable 88-year-old “Bobfather,” currently has his fingers in more pots than any other promoter.

Arum co-promotes Tyson Fury who owns the WBC belt and is widely regarded as the best heavyweight in the world after his sensational performance against Deontay Wilder. And on June 20, Arum will attempt to sweep the board, in a manner of speaking, when his fighter Kubrat Pulev challenges Anthony Joshua who owns the three other meaningful pieces of heavyweight hardware. This will be Pulev’s third fight for Arum after signing a multi-fight contract with Arum’s Top Rank organization on Dec. 8, 2018.

This is not the fight that fans want to see. Pulev, a Bulgarian who will be 39 years old when this fight comes to fruition, hasn’t been particularly impressive in his two fights under the Top Rank banner. He struggled with Bogdan Dinu before putting him away in the seventh round and then looked flat while winning a unanimous decision over flabby Rydell Booker, a fighter from Detroit whose career had been interrupted by a nearly 12-year prison stint for cocaine trafficking.

There’s a general feeling that Joshua-Pulev will play out similar to Pulev’s 2014 match with defending heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko. He was stopped in the fifth round. That remains his only loss in 29 pro fights. Nonetheless, the fight will almost assuredly be a sellout.

Joshua and Pulev were originally slated to fight on Oct. 28 at Principality Stadium in Wales. The official press conference was held on Sept. 11 and the next day advance ticket sales purportedly reached 77,000. A shoulder injury forced Pulev to withdraw from that fight. He was replaced by Carlos Takam.

Although Joshua vs. Pulev doesn’t get the adrenaline flowing, the venue, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, gives the event a certain glow. The 62,303-seat facility in North London, which opened on April 3 of last year, is the sexiest new stadium on the international sporting scene. Among the amenities are an in-house bakery and a microbrewery. The stadium (which will eventually take the name of a corporate sponsor, perhaps as early as June) was built for the soccer club for which it was temporarily named, but with features built with an eye toward housing an NFL team on the assumption that a London franchise is imminent.

Five weeks prior to the Joshua-Pulev fight, another important heavyweight contest will take place in the UK when Dillian Whyte (27-1, 18 KOs) meets Alexander Povetkin (35-2-1, 24 KOs) in Manchester.

Both appeared on the undercard of Joshua-Ruiz II in Saudi Arabia. Carrying a career-high 271 pounds, Whyte looked very ordinary while winning a 10-round unanimous decision over Mariusz Wach. In Whyte’s defense, he took the fight on short notice. Povetkin, a former Olympic gold medalist and former WBA world heavyweight titlist engaged Michael Hunter in an entertaining 12-round affair that was fairly ruled a draw. In the opinion of the pundits, the 40-year-old Russian showed that he still had plenty left in his tank.

Bob Arum won’t be at that fight. He will be in Glasgow, Scotland, where Top Rank fighter Josh Taylor defends his WBA and IBF 140-pound belts against Thailand’s Apinun Khongsong.

For many serious boxing fans, the most intriguing heavyweight fight on the horizon is the April 11 clash on London between fellow Londoners Daniel Dubois (14-0, 13 KOs) and Joe Joyce (10-0, 9 KOs). The buzz is even more palpable than when Anthony Joshua, then 14-0, opposed the aforementioned Dillian Whyte (16-0) in London in 2015.

Dubois is currently favored in the 4/1 range. His previous crossroads fight with fellow unbeaten Nathan Gorman was expected to be a tough test, but it turned out to be a one-sided affair that Dubois dominated en route to a fifth-round stoppage. An imposing physical specimen who carries roughly 240 pounds on a six-foot-five frame, Dubois, only 22 years old, has been anointed a future world heavyweight champion by no less an authority than Jeff Powell of the Daily Mail who has covered the sport for 50 years. But the 34-year-old, six-foot-six Joyce, who had a long amateur career that culminated with a silver medal at the 2016 Olympics, doesn’t lack for supporters.

During the under-appreciated reign of Wladimir Klitschko, the heavyweight division lost its luster. But boxing’s flagship division has rebounded with a flourish.

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