Showtime's Espinoza on Joshua Gaining U.S. Fans, Wilder Clash

By Edward Chaykovsky

Stephen Espinoza, the head of Showtime Sports, expects the boxing fans in the United States to be fixated on the outcome of the heavyweight showdown between Anthony and Wladimir Klitschko.

Joshua vs. Klitschko takes place on April 29th before an expected record crowd of 90,000 fans at Wembley. The IBF, IBO, WBA titles will be on the line.

There is still no official deal on which network will secure the television rights for the United States. The situation is messy, because Joshua has an exclusive deal with Showtime, while Klitschko has a deal with HBO.

Espinoza believes a victory over someone like Klitschko will help boost his reputation notoriety with the American public.

"He's still a bit of an undiscovered quantity here in the US to the general population," Espinoza told Sky Sports. "Boxing fans are certainly well aware of him. I think a mega fight like Joshua-Klitschko will go a long, long way toward building a fan base here in the US.

"Knowing a little bit about Anthony's background, his personality, he is engaging and charismatic, very likeable. I have no doubt that he will take well to the US market and vice versa. Success in the US market really is no different than most of the other markets. It starts with elite performance inside the ring. Anthony, in the large part, has let his performances speak for him and that's really the best testament to the rare elite athlete that he is.

"It's just a matter of putting him in the right situations on television, in media, in person, so that people really will get a taste of him. There are much tougher jobs than breaking an athlete as unique as Anthony is."

The real big fight, if everything comes together, is a unification with WBC world champion Deontay Wilder (37-0, 36 KOs), who next Saturday night will make a voluntary defense against Gerald Washington in Alabama.

Wilder is also aligned with Showtime, which makes the fight easy to make - although Espinoza does not expect that clash to come together until the later part of 2018 at the earliest.

"The goal going into 2017 was to do at least one fight here in the US," said Espinoza. "I think that's still the goal to make the US debut and fight once, possibly twice here in the US. There is a ready-made opponent in Deontay Wilder and I think the two of them will ultimately be on a collision course. I don't think the end of 2017 or early 2018 is too early, but time will tell.

"The good thing about a potential Joshua-Wilder fight is that both sides seem very, very interested. Matchroom and Anthony have expressed interest, Deontay is very interested as well, and stylistically I think it's a really interesting match-up."