ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Josh Popper admits he really didn’t want to fight Dillon Pumphrey. It was a fight he was more or less backed into taking, after several other opponents turned down the four-round heavyweight fight this past Saturday at Tropicana Casino. Pumphrey, a rotund man of 330lbs from West Virginia, represented a step backwards in competition, but Popper found the motivation to make the most of a bad situation when Pumphrey couldn’t help but run his mouth at the weigh-in. While Popper says he didn’t even understand what he was saying, when the bell rang, he was ready to make him swallow his words, whatever they may have been.
“I just kept telling him, ‘Let's go. Don't you quit on me. I got something for you. Don't quit on me.’ I asked him, ‘Where was all that smack that he was talking the day before?’” recalled Popper, a 6ft 3ins heavyweight with a 6-0 (6 KOs) record but perhaps best known for dating Madonna.
Just over a minute into the fight, a left hook counter put Pumphrey down, leading to the stoppage.
“What he had said yesterday got me a little riled up. It actually got me to step out of character a little bit. But I knew I wanted to come and make a statement. I was not gonna let him see the stool, no matter what.”
The talking never ended, even after Popper had secured the TKO1 win. Pumphrey then inexplicably turned his attention to one of Popper’s trainers, Jose Luis Guzman, which elicited amusement from the New York-based trainer.
“When Josh stopped him, he was talking shit to me, that he wanted to fight me and wait until he sees me outside of the ring. He was gonna beat me up. I told him you suck,” recalled Guzman, a former pro who also works with Amanda Serrano. “After the fight was going to my hotel room, I bumped into him in the hall and I just looked at him seriously and he put his head down and kept moving.”
Amid the chaos, Popper was able to gain valuable experience in how to deal with unique circumstances. It’s the type of experience that Popper has had to gain on the job, having roughly just one year of amateur experience in New York City. Popper, now 32, fought as an amateur from 2022 to 2023, winning the New York Boxing Tournament and New York Ring Masters titles during that brief time before turning pro in late 2024.
During that time, Popper was making more headlines outside of the ring - he was tabloid fodder at the time for dating Madonna. The pop legend had become a fixture at ringside for his fights around the city, showing up to watch him compete at venues like Gleason’s Gym and the Classic Car Club.
Popper doesn’t sweat the labels people put on him, however.
“If that helps get eyes on me, so be it. I'll take it. But if people want to say that that's the reason why I'm having success, or if that's who I truly am as a person, stay tuned. I can't wait to showcase what I actually am,” said Popper. “But if people want to bottle me up because of who I dated, I don't care. I don't really listen to the noise outside. I'm in the gym working my you know what off.
“You can Google all you want, just because I might be connected to some people, they're not in the ring doing what I need to do. I'm in the ring handling business, and I'm going to continue to showcase that, and I do plan on being a champion.”
Guzman says that Popper, despite his relatively late start in boxing, continues to make up for it with hard work in the gym, absorbing the lessons imparted on him.
“One thing about Josh is that he’s a student of the game. He’s always learning and when we practice things with him in the gym, he listens to it and he executes it,” said Guzman. “I think that’s what he’s getting to in the pros, where he’s able to slow down the pace and pick his shots more and just trying things he’s not comfortable with.”
Boxing isn’t the first sport in which Popper was able to find success despite getting a late start. He didn’t suit up for the football team until his final year at Holy Spirit High School in Absecon, New Jersey, just outside of Atlantic City. He played defensive end on the football team that won the state championship in 2011, which included future NFL players Joe Callahan and Anthony Sarao. He played well enough to play college football at Rowan University, an NCAA Division III school, earning New Jersey Athletic Conference All-Conference first team honors in his senior and sophomore years, and later earned invitations to rookie minicamps for NFL teams the Arizona Cardinals and Indianapolis Colts.
Boxing was initially something he picked up as a means to cope with his father’s death. He took the nickname “The Hammer” as a tribute to his father, who built homes with the same hammer Popper now has tattooed on his back.
Popper, who fought three times in 2025, says he wants to fight at least five times in 2026. If he had his wish, he’d love to make a fight with fellow Atlantic City native Bruce Seldon Jnr, a 31-year-old with a pro record of 8-0 (6 KOs). Seldon, the son of the former WBA heavyweight champion of the same name, shared a card with Popper in November at the same venue. Promoter Larry Goldberg, who has showcased both fighters through his Boxing Insider Promotions cards in Atlantic City, says he has been trying to make that fight happen for the past year. He believes it would be the biggest fight in Atlantic City in recent years.
“We would have a turnaway crowd. I have talked to both trainers and both camps, and they’re both like ‘Oh we’re gonna win this fight.’ That’s the kind of fight you want to have,” said Goldberg.
Popper agrees, saying that this matchup would be his springboard to greater acclaim and attention en route to bigger plateaus.
“That would be a huge fight. We're definitely really good friends. We've talked about it. Our teams are in the mix of making that happen. So that’ll be an amazing fight if I get that opportunity to step in the ring with Bruce,” said Popper.
“If we're able to share the ring together, that's going to be a huge fight for the city here, and we'll definitely look to make that happen.”
