Bob Arum would love for nothing more than Oleksandr Usyk to beat Anthony Joshua again.
The head of Top Rank Inc. said in a recent interview that he hopes to resume discussions about matching the winner of that heavyweight unification bout – on the line are Usyk’s WBA, WBO, and IBF titles – with his charge, WBC titlist Tyson Fury, at some point next year. Arum is coming off a week that saw his promotional partner, Frank Warren of Queensberry Promotion, win a record $41 million purse bid over Matchroom Boxing’s Eddie Hearn ($32 million) to the rights for Fury’s WBC title defense against mandatory challenger Dillian Whyte.
Although Arum does not work with either London’s Joshua (24-2, 22 KOs) or Ukraine’s Usyk (19-0, 13 KOs) in a business capacity, he hinted that a deal would be far easier to consummate with Usyk’s team. Usyk is managed by Egis Klimas, who, in addition to former undisputed lightweight champion Vasiliy Lomachenko, a close friend of Usyk’s, has a slew of fighters signed with Arum’s Top Rank. Joshua is backed by rival promoter Eddie Hearn, whom Arum has consistently butted heads with over the years.
Usyk is technically signed to Hearn’s Matchroom, but it is not clear when their deal expires. Should the Ukrainian beat Joshua again, Arum seems to believe that Hearn would be out of the picture, paving way for negotiations for the undisputed fight to occur ‘in-house.’
“Right now, if Joshua beats Usyk again, Hearn has nothing to say about it, right?” Arum told FightHype.com. “It’s only if Joshua beats Uysk that Hearn is back in the picture.
“There’s no reason to talk to Hearn about that fight at the end of the year. We’ll talk, instead, to Egis about that fight. It’ll all be done in-house.”
Asked who he is rooting for in the Uysk-Joshua rematch, Arum cracked, “Is there a question?”
Of course, for the undisputed fight to materialize in the way that Arum prefers, it also means that Fury would need to continue to win. The Manchester native is supposed to fight mandatory challenger Whyte in the spring, but Whyte has balked at the terms of the 80/20 purse split, so it is not clear when and if the fight will actually take place.
In any case, the conclusion of the Fury-Whyte purse bid means that the Usyk-Joshua rematch can move forward as scheduled; there was initially some discussion that Joshua might take a step-aside fee to allow Uysk to immediately face Fury in a full-unification, but those talks collapsed at the 11th hour. Usyk defeated Joshua by unanimous decision last year Sept. 25 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London to win three pieces of the heavyweight crown.
