Domination in America, Starting from being a Boxing Champion

In the collaboration, the brand side also held a dominant position, always able to terminate the partnership.

Just like when Kanye West had an incident, Adidas immediately announced the discontinuation of the partnership and the cessation of Yeezy product manufacturing, causing Kanye's net worth to drop from over a billion to several hundred million.

Link thought for a bit, then told Franco that abandoning other apparel brand endorsements was not feasible.

If Nike was sincere about the collaboration, they either had to amend the contract or increase the endorsement fee and sales revenue sharing, otherwise, it wouldn't matter, as he did not lack the endorsement income.

Franco said he understood and would continue to negotiate with Nike.

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After the competition, Link also welcomed a period of rest; he and Ivanka returned to their Miami garden villa to stay temporarily and take a short vacation.

He did not need to worry about boxing matches, movie box office numbers, or weekly new album sales.

Each day, he and Ivanka would cozy up in the villa, play with cats, walk dogs, sunbathe in the garden, go fishing off the deck, practice shooting at the range, play golf at the Thomp International and watch the Heat's 'Big Three' lose to Novitski on their home ground.

After a few days, Ivanka had to return to Los Angeles to deal with work. Link made a trip to Nashville halfway through, hung out with Alexander and Cynthia for a day, bought a lot of gifts Taylor thought were useless, and then also returned to work in Los Angeles.

The MTV Video Music Awards kicked off in late September, with him invited as a presenting guest to award Katy Perry with the Video of the Year.

An artist under Link Music, Mars, won the Best Male Video for "Just the way you are," and Justin Bieber won the Best Music Video Information Award for "U smile."

Lana Del Rey and Wiz Khalifa, along with other rising stars, were invited to the award ceremony but did not win any awards; Ariana Grande and Charlie Puth, as this year's new musical talents, were invited to perform on the MTV stage.

After MTV, Link continued to promote his new album "Love is gone."

In its fifth week of release, it sold 183,000 copies in the United States, ranking second on the Billboard album chart.

The champion was Jay-Z and Kanye West's newly released rap album "Watch the Throne," which sold 395,000 copies in its first week.

"Watch the Throne" stole the champion's throne from "Love is gone," sparking a lot of media attention, and Billboard jokingly claimed Jay-Z and Kanye took their revenge with the new album.

Although "Watch the Throne" had good sales this week, its leading single, "Otis," ranked highest at sixth on the singles chart, with the previous spots all taken by songs from Link's new album.

On streaming platforms, the songs from "Watch the Throne" couldn't compete with "Love is gone" in terms of popularity.

The best-performing "Otis" had a weekly play count on iTunes comparable only to the twelfth ranked song from "Love is gone," "Remember Me."

After comparison, the media also had to admit that Link was impressive.

Back when he debuted in '09, he was overshadowed by Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, and others; his first Grammy attendance ended with him leaving in protest, and back then, Kanye even refused to talk about Link publicly, fearing being overshadowed by Link's popularity.

In just over two years, Link had risen to a remarkably high position in the music industry.

Now, even the hit songs from Jay-Z and Kanye West's collaborative album couldn't match the top ten songs from Link's new album in terms of popularity.

In addition to the high quality of Link's new album songs, his fame was also a contributing factor.

The New York Post in a commentary article, called Link the 'successor to MJ' and mentioned that MJ had invited Link to perform concerts before his death in '09, the same year Link debuted; after MJ's death, Link also produced a 'divine song' in his honor, and both Link and MJ are global pop culture icons.

The newspaper felt that it was appropriate to dub Link as MJ's successor, considering him the leading figure in today's Western pop music scene.

However, other media had differing opinions.

The Chicago Tribune acknowledged Link's current influence is significant, deserving the title of the leading figure in Western pop music, but not yet on MJ's level. Considering he debuted less than three years ago, in a few more years his global influence may not be less than MJ's.

This was something worth acknowledging.

The counter-argument made by the newspaper was that MJ was purely a singer and musician, famous for his influence in music.

Whereas, Link's fame was more diverse – music, boxing, movies, sports, internet celebrity, etc.; without any of these aspects, Link could not have achieved his current fame.

Therefore, dubbing Link as 'MJ's successor' was not suitable; Link is Link, a new 'pop culture icon' born in the modern era.

Entertainment Weekly also recognized Link as the leading figure in today's Western music scene and grouped him with Lady Gaga, Adele, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry as 'the king and four queens,' which could also be referred to as 'one king and four queens' of the music scene.

Hong Kong Island's Apple Daily ranked Link and Lady Gaga as 'the king and the queen,' while Adele, Katy Perry, Rihanna, and Taylor Swift were called 'the four great songstresses.'

The Guardian from Britain appraised Link and Adele as the leading male and female singers in today's Western music scenes.

Regarding these accolades, whether good or bad, Link would not be overly concerned; being too mindful of external praise might make him proud and complacent.

Focusing too much on negative feedback could hinder his actions.

"Love is gone," in its fifth week of release in the United States, had a cumulative sale of 3.62 million copies, also becoming the fastest solo album to break through 3.5 million copies in the United States.

Internationally, within five weeks it had reached cumulative sales of 10.617 million copies, becoming Link's fourth diamond-certified record. His debut album "The Fighter," after being on the market for over two years, had also surpassed the 10 million sales mark in August.