Eddie Hearn believes he may be able to stage Anthony Joshua’s world heavyweight title defence against Kubrat Pulev in front of a decent-sized crowd in November.

Hearn says he is hopeful that he could be able to stage the fight at the O2 Arena, London, where he won his first world title from Charles Martin in 2016 or Manchester Arena, where he made his second title defence later that same year.

Even if social distancing measures are still in place, he hopes a crowd of around 5,000-10,000 could be allowed in the 20,000-capacity venues. And such a crowd could be doubled if it was staged at the Principality Stadium, Cardiff, which has a normal capacity of more than 70,000.

“I spoke to Bob Arum [who promotes Pulev] last night and November is the absolute focus for Pulev against Joshua,” Hearn said.

“The way things have moved in the last few weeks here, I’m really confident we can get a crowd here for Joshua against Pulev.”

Hearn has been looking at the possibility of staging the fight in front of a VIPs-only crowd of around 1,000 at the Royal Albert Hall paying four-figure ticket prices. The fight had initially been scheduled for the 60,000-capacity Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last weekend before the coronavirus lockdown put paid to that.

No sporting events at the moment are allowing spectators, although with lockdown measures easing, Hearn says he is hopeful that crowds will come back in some form in September.

“If we’re not allowed the Principality Stadium, we’ll happily go to Manchester Arena or The O2. It would be amazing to see Josh fight back there.

“I’m confident and we’re starting to talk to venues that aren’t open yet about the possibility of opening those venues up should they be allowed.”

Hearn also said that he expected talks for a Joshua-Tyson Fury fight to take a step forward soon, with Arum having taken over responsibility for negotiating the side of the WBC heavyweight champion from Daniel Kinahan, whose alleged connections to an organised crime group led to questions being asked in the Irish parliament.

“[Arum] is in charge of everything and that’s all right with me,” Hearn said.

“We had a really good chat last night, talking about Joshua-Fury, talking about the fact that, 'yes we know we’ve agreed the money and how the split’s going to work'. Now we need to move forward, particularly on where that fight will be staged, when it will be staged.

“Over the next month or so we’ll be putting the paperwork together for that and finalising it for 2021.”

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for Boxing Scene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.