SUGAR RAY LEONARD believes Anthony Joshua’s defining fight would be against Deontay Wilder. And the ring great has urged the British heavyweight star to travel to America to become a global superstar.
WBA, IBF, IBO and WBO champion Joshua wants to face WBC title holder Wilder at Wembley in April after their teams failed to agree on a deal for them to meet this year.
Big-hitting Wilder is now risking his unbeaten record against Tyson Fury on December 1 in LA. But Leonard – ringside for Joshua’s win over Alexander Povetkin last month – feels the Brit taking on Wilder would be like when he returned to the ring in 1987 to beat ferocious middleweight, Marvin Hagler.
The American said: “It’s a fight made in heaven. It would be up there with all the heavyweight fights in history. The numbers would be incredible. The reason I came back was that I wanted to fight the best in Marvelous Marvin Hagler.
“Hagler was the last one I wanted to go up against so I made sure it happened. It’s kind of a stamp of approval, people remember how you fared against the power.”
Five-weight world champion Leonard believes Joshua needs to make the trip across the Atlantic if he wants to be remembered as a world great.