Eddie Hearn had denied speculation that negotiations have commenced to match his heavyweight Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury.
However, he does say speculative proposals have been talked about should the roadblocks to that fight, Kubrat Pulev and Deontay Wilder, step aside.
Former WBC champion Wilder has a rematch clause to face Fury while Pulev is Joshua’s mandatory. Deals would need to be struck for them to wait in line if Fury-Joshua was to happen next.
“I had [boxing journalist Mike] Coppinger ask me about two weeks ago and said, ‘I heard there’s been negotiations for Fury-Joshua.’ I said, ‘No, there isn’t’,” stated Hearn to BoxingScene.com. “He said, ‘I know there is.’ I said, ‘You can write what you want, but I’m telling you there isn’t.’ Then, yesterday [Thursday] Steve Kim phoned me up and said, ‘I hear there’s negotiations between you and MTK about Wilder stepping aside.’ I said, ‘No. We would never have a conversation with Wilder about stepping aside. That’s a contract between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder.’
‘So you’re telling me there’s absolutely no negotiations?’
‘There’s absolutely no negotiations.’
“What there is, is there’s ongoing conversation about when and where that fight could take place. Right now, we’ve had a couple of offers from a couple of different sites about that fight taking place. When we started originally speaking to sites about this fight, we all had December in mind because AJ was going to fight in June, Wilder-Fury was going to be in July and then we were going to do it in December. Now, the only way that fight could take place in December is if Wilder steps aside. But don’t forget, we have a contract with Kubrat Pulev and Fury has a contract to fight with Wilder. That’s what’s happening.
“We’ve had a couple of approaches from the Middle East. Obviously Matchroom’s partners, Skills Challenge Entertainment, are in Saudi Arabia and they’re very keen to have the fight. We’ve had a couple of other territories as well. At the moment it’s just talking, fielding offers from different sites but to make the fight next, as in no Pulev and no Wilder, it would take [Bob] Arum and MTK to speak to Wilder to arrange a step aside and then come back to me to let me know it’s possible and then myself and Bob speak regarding the Pulev fight.
"So at the moment, it’s all pie in the sky until we know that both those fighters would be willing to step aside. I can’t imagine in a million years that Deontay Wilder would be happy to let Anthony Joshua have a crack at being the undisputed world champion and to delay his rematch in a world of so much uncertainty right now; it would look so weak. It would be like me going up to AJ after the Ruiz fight and saying, ‘Listen, someone’s going to give you $10 million to step aside.’ He would have punched me straight in the face. I could have given him $100 million to step aside from the Ruiz rematch and he wouldn’t have taken it. [Shelley] Finkel and that lot don’t want AJ to get his shot at anything – or me – to get a shot at anything. So I don’t see it. What I do see is Joshua-Pulev, Wilder-Fury and the winners fighting in the spring/summer of 2021. However, if there was a way to make it happen at the end of this year, we are absolutely all in.”
With coronavirus forcing much of the sporting world into lockdown, there’s an appetite for live sport. Will that make the bigger fights more likely?
“It might make the sport more desperate for big fights, but the way I’m looking at it at the moment is the promoters are all competing against each other, but I look at it now that really we’re competing against other sports because when we come back, there’s going to be so many sports, so much activity, so much scheduling issues, sponsorship…” Hearn said.
“Everyone’s going to be scrapping for everything and we’re going to have to come back strong because we were one of the few sports that went into the lockdown with momentum whereas other sports have been dwindling for years. I think it would be great to come back with a bang. Fans just want any boxing at the moment. But to come back with a massive event would be great. The bigger issue is generating the appropriate revenue when there’s no gate. Until a gate returns, it’s impossible to make Wilder-Fury, it’s impossible to make Joshua-Fury. The Middle East wouldn’t want to put the fight on behind closed doors.
“It’s not a financial thing, it just doesn’t look right. I think this [Fury-AJ] is the biggest heavyweight fight of all time. I think at the moment everyone is panicking a bit too much to hurry up and get back to it. When this all happened I was saying, ‘We need to get back ASAP, we’ll do it in May. Alright, it won’t be May, it must be June’. Now we’re in July. July for us is 100 per cent the target but it’s got to be right and we don’t want so many restrictions being in place that it ends up being a sh-t show. If we have to wait a couple of extra months, it’s not ideal but we want to get back in the arena as soon as possible.”