By Scott Gilfoid: Anthony Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn explains how WBC heavyweight champion Deontay ‘Bronze Bomber’ Wilder can make $50 million by agreeing to a $5 million tune-up fight followed by a $15 million flat fee to face AJ, and if victorious in that fight, a $30 million payday in the rematch. This is not a percentage deal in any of these three fights that Hearn is talking about.
These are all flat fees given by Hearn for Wilder. The flat fee of $15 million is all Wilder would get for the fight with Joshua. There wouldn’t be additional money because it would be a flat fee with Joshua getting the rest of the money. After taxes and paying for his training and managerial costs, Wilder would get considerably less than the $15 million. It wouldn’t be surprising if Wilder winds up with only $4 million after all the taxes and other costs are taken out.
For Wilder to get the $5 million tune-up payday, he would need to pick out an opponent that Hearn agrees to. It’s believed that Wilder would likely need to fight on Hearn’s DAZN streaming service against someone like Dillian Whyte.
The Joshua-Wilder fight failed to get made after Hearn gave Wilder a 24 deadline to sign for the fight or else he was walking away. Not surprisingly, Wilder didn’t sign. So instead of that fight taking place, Joshua is facing Alexander Povetkin next in a fight that few boxing fans are interested in seeing. Now Hearn is saying that he’s not going to increase the $15 million flat fee for Wilder and he wants him to sign to fight Joshua on April 13 at Wembley Stadium in London.
Hearn’s contract for Wilder has a one-way rematch clause that works for Joshua only. If Wilder loses, he doesn’t get a rematch with Joshua. It’s a terrible deal for Wilder but a great one for Joshua.
Hearn recently surprised a lot of boxing fans when he gave up on the negotiations for the Joshua-Wilder fight and instead chose to match Joshua against AJ’s WBA mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin in September. Wilder wasn’t interested in signing the contract for a flat fee of $15 million without a date or a venue. It was a bad deal for Wilder all around and a great one for Joshua, who would get the lion’s share of the revenue as well as the home country advantage.
“He’ll go off and do his thing and make a couple of million dollars, and I think people will say, ‘Stop messing around, do you want this fight?’” Hearn said to Fighthype about Wilder and the Joshua fight. “If he doesn’t want $15 million anymore, he wants 16 or 17, we can only say, ‘no.’ The offer is an offer. It’s not changing. But the dialogue shouldn’t stop,” Hearn said.
So there it is. Hearn isn’t going to increase the $15 million flat fee for Wilder. He either accepts the deal or else he’ll not get the fight with Joshua. For a fight that could potentially bring in $100 million, it’s sad to see Hearn giving Wilder a flat fee take-it-or leave it offer of $15 million for the Joshua fight. This on top of Wilder having to fly to the UK to fight Joshua in front of a huge pro-Joshua crowd at Wembley Stadium in London, England. Wilder isn’t going Hearn’s flat fee business. He wants a 50-50 deal of the pot. So, if the fight brings in $100 million, Wilder will get $50 million for that one fight rather than him needing to do Hearn a favor by fighting for $5 million against one of his Matchroom Boxing stable fighters on DAZN, and then getting $15 million for the Joshua fight. Only if Wilder wins that fight, he would get a $30 million payday for the Joshua rematch. What Hearn isn’t saying is that even with the
Joshua-Wilder rematch, Joshua would still likely get the bigger purse with a possible $70 million payday to Wilder’s $30 million. All total, Joshua could walk away with $155 million to Wilder’s $50 million. Wilder’s $50 million would be contingent on him beating Joshua in the first fight. It’s a rotten deal for Wilder that he’s not guaranteed his payday or given a split instead of a flat fee. Fighters that get flat fees are usually less popular fighters. Wilder is popular and he’s holding the most prestigious heavyweight title in the division with his WBC belt.
”We have to make this fight,” Hearn said. We will commit to this fight today. If they would sign the contract today for everything they agreed to, we would counter sign it within 10 minutes. We got the date. Everything is set. That’s how close he is to having the fight. He can have it today. There’s the contract to everything you want. You have the opportunity to be the undisputed heavyweight world champion,” Hearn said.
Hearn sounds really greedy with the way he’s talking. He can do that obviously because he has Joshua and the UK fans are sold on him despite the fact that he almost lost to 41-year-old Wladimir Klitschko last year.
”If he wins that fight, his next fight he’ll make $30 million,” Hearn said about Wilder. ”So with the offer I made, 20 and 30, if he’s going to win, which he says he is, he makes $50 million in the next year.”
It’s a bad deal for Wilder to have to take so much less than Joshua with the $15 million flat fee offer from Hearn. When one fighter is making $85 million and the other just $15 million, it’s just wrong. Even if the fight doesn’t quite make $100 million, Wilder would be getting a terrible deal by agreeing to a flat fee of $15 million rather than insisting on a percentage deal of 50-50 or 55-45. Joshua’s three titles don’t mean much due to the weak opposition he won the titles against in beating Charles Martin, Joseph Parker and an inactive 41-year-old Wladimir, who hadn’t fought in two years before taking the fight. Parker is a good fighter, but with the referee that worked his fight against Joshua, he never had a fair chance of winning that fight.
”I’m hoping before the [Alexander] Povetkin fight, the fight is signed,” Hearn said about his hopes of getting Wilder to sign for the Joshua rematch before his fight against Povetkin in September. ”Like I said, that fight can be signed today.”
Yeah, I imagine the Joshua vs. Wilder fight could happen today if Deontay were willing to sign for a flat fee and then have to come all the way to the UK to fight Joshua in London, but unfortunately for Hearn it’s not going to happen. Hearn is going to need to sweeten the offer by giving Wilder a big bump up in pay. Wilder says he wants a percentage deal before he’ll agree to sign, so Hearn needs to listen to what he’s saying and give him the payday that he’s asking for. It would be so easy to make the fight happen if Hearn bumped Wilder’s payday up to $50 million for the April 13 fight and then gave him a rematch clause that works for him instead of only Joshua. The existing deal is way too one-sided in Joshua’s favor for it to be worthwhile for Wilder to sign. I mean, even if Wilder knocks Joshua cold on April 13, he still winds up getting the short end of the stick in the rematch.
”He knows the fight will never happen a 50-50. That was like propaganda,” Hearn said about Wilder’s
recent interview by Showtime Boxing. “We got a guy here; somehow we got to make him a star. So let’s go out and call out the biggest star in world boxing Anthony Joshua and say that he’s running scared.”
There’s nothing wrong with Showtime interviewing Wilder and asking him about the Joshua fight. It’s certainly not propaganda, as Hearn says. It’s not as if Showtime was lobbing softball questions to Deontay during the interview. If you look at Hearn’s interviews on IFL TV, you can argue that he’s getting a lot of soft questions during those interviews. If it were me that was doing the interviewing of Hearn, I’d put his feet to the fire and start asking him some tough questions, starting with why did Joshua turn down $50 million to fight Wilder? I would then ask why it’s taken Joshua so many years to finally get around to fighting Deontay?
”Our deal was a flat purse where we controlled all the international rights,” Hearn said. ”From our point nothing has changed. That offer is still there. The contract is still there. He just needs to add the ink,” Hearn said.
It’s sad that Hearn is coming right out and admitting that the deal for Wilder isn’t changing. Talk about a good way to make sure the Joshua vs. Wilder never takes place. This entire interview was incredibly off-putting to watch. Hearn sounds smug and completely unwilling to negotiate with Wilder in the real sense. It’s all very one-sided with Hearn. It’s no wonder that Wilder chose not to sign for the fight.
