Boxing

Eddie Hearn Opens Up About Anthony Joshua's Boxing Retirement Timeline

Matchroom Boxing's Eddie Hearn got honest about Anthony Joshua's fighting future.

Grant Young

Anthony Joshua (left) and Boxing Promotor Eddie Hearn during a press conference on September 19, 2024.
Anthony Joshua (left) and Boxing Promotor Eddie Hearn during a press conference on September 19, 2024. / IMAGO / PA Images

Fresh off of winning a gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics, 18-year-old Anthony Joshua signed with Eddie Hearn's Matchroom Boxing promotion before his first professional fight.

The rest is history.

Since then, Joshua has gone on to hold the unified world heavyweight championship twice, won 28 professional bouts against many of the world's biggest and most intimidating boxers, and has reportedly amassed over $200 million — all with Hearn at his side.

But Joshua is now 35 years old, is coming off of a brutal knockout loss against Daniel Dubois (who most predicted him to beat), and is without a clear opponent to fight next.

British boxing's golden boy is certainly in the back half of his career. And while only Joshua may truly know for how much longer he wants to fight, Eddie Hearn likely has a better guess than anybody else. This is why what he recently said regarding Joshua's retirement timeline holds immense value.

"Not yet, but there will come the time," Hearn is quoted saying of Joshua's retirement, per a February 16 article from DAZN.

"Those kinds of conversations really come from behind the scenes from how somebody is performing in camp. In camp, if you haven't got it anymore, it'll be apparent. The injuries will get worse, you'll get hurt in sparring against somebody you shouldn't be getting hurt against," Hearn continued.

"You're not sharp and when that moment comes, that's when the team will say 'AJ's not looking good you know' and that's the moment when I will probably have a conversation with him. For the Daniel Dubois fight, the camp was great. He was super sharp and we were really confident going into that fight, coming off four good wins, two really good wins, and we thought he would win.

"We knew how dangerous the fight was, so he comes out, has a terrible start, never really recovers, comes back into the fight a little bit and gets chinned. No problem," Hearn continued. "If camp had gone really poorly and we were unsure, I think that conversation may have been brought forward.

"If camp had gone really poorly and we were unsure, I think [the retirement] conversation may have been brought forward," Hearn concluded.

Therefore, it doesn't sound like Joshua's retirement is imminent. But with one bad camp and another tough loss, it could arrive quickly.

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Grant Young
GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young covers Boxing, Women’s Basketball, and the New York Mets for On SI. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco, where he also played Division 1 baseball for five years, and he thinks it’s time that Canelo Álvarez fights David Benavidez.