Eddie Hearn has warned that September 25 is not yet the definite date for a fight between Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk, because contracts are still yet to be signed, although he is hopeful that when it does go ahead, it will be in front of a capacity crowd. 

Hearn is hopeful that Joshua will defend his WBA, WBO, IBO and IBF heavyweight titles against Usyk, the former undisputed world cruiserweight champion, on that date at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in North London. But nothing is certain yet and it is still not certain how big the attendance will be. 

“You have to be careful what you say, I was only doing an Instagram live and I said: it looks like September 25 at Spurs and… bang… that is the preferred date,” Hearn said. “We have a call to finalize any existing points on the contract, which are all minimal and moving forward that is the likely date.  

“It’s not cast iron but it is the preference. Obviously, we were due to do the Pulev fight at Spurs pre-pandemic so we’ve always been looking to do a show there. Hopefully, we can move forward to an official announcement at some point.” 

Hearn said that boxing is crying out for the return of capacity crowds as pandemic lockdown rules are loosened. At the moment, attendance numbers are greatly restricted and, while 40,000 have been allowed to attend football matches at Wembley during the European Championships and crowds have been allowed for Wimbledon, indoor sports are lagging behind. 

“It’s a must really,” Hearn said. “I’ve just come back from Mexico, I was in Dallas a few weeks ago with 73,000. It’s depressing what we’re seeing over here to be honest with you. But we have to follow the rules.  

“If we don’t have a full crowd by the end of September we might as well pack up and go home. That includes the Premier League and all football because they will be butchered if the government don’t open up grounds for the new season. And that obviously that date will fall in line with what we want to do at Spurs.” 

Whether boxing has been treated worse by the UK Government than other sports is a view that is gaining some traction.  

“Yeah, it’s always the way, though, isn’t it?” Hearn said. “We [Matchroom] have been lucky enough to have a couple of test events with the snooker, we’ve also been denied stuff when we were told it could happen.  

“But they’ve got to follow the rules and the science and it’s very difficult for anyone to make a balanced or correct decision with everything going on.  

“But when you look around the world now, and our rate of vaccines, you have to say: you have to open up. It’s ridiculous now.  

“You see cases rising, but hospital admissions not rising, everybody who is vulnerable becoming vaccinated… it’s very frustrating now that we’re doing shows all over the world with either full capacity or near-full capacities and we can’t get the same here… fingers crossed September we’ll be good to go.” 

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. 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.