By Scott Gilfoid: In what sounds like he’s already getting his excuse ready, Eddie Hearn is saying that Tyson Fury will NOT be able to fight Anthony Joshua if he loses against WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder. The mega-fight between Fury (27-0, 19 KOs) and Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) is in the works for November. The fight is still not a done deal at this time, but it’s expected to happen.
It doesn’t make sense for Hearn to disqualify Fury for a fight against Joshua if he loses to Wilder. I mean, Joshua fought Wladimir Klitschko last year after he was beaten by Fury in his previous fight in 2015. What’s even worse is Wladimir was coming off of a 2-year-old layoff at the time and he was 40-years-old. With all that going against Wladimir, Fury didn’t reject him as an opponent for Joshua. He should have said no to him, but he didn’t.
”If Fury gets tonked out by Wilder, the Joshua fight will never happen,” Hearn said to Tha Boxing Voice. ”Like I said before, he must be getting a fortune up front in escrow to take this fight.”
There’s nothing wrong with Fury getting beaten by a talent like Wilder, is there? We’re talking about the best fighter in the heavyweight division in the minds of a lot of boxing fans. That’s not a rejection of Joshua, but he did almost get knocked out by a ring rusty and shot-looking Wladimir last year. Some think that Wladimir had mercy on Joshua by taking it easy on him when he had him on the verge of being knocked out in the 6th round.
Hearn already has Dillian Whyte and Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller lined up for Joshua’s next two fights. Wilder and Fury need not apply. Hearn’s likely plan from the start was to match Joshua against Whyte on April 13 and then Miller in September of next year.
Hearn says he wanted Fury to fight the following guys in a four-fight deal: Travis Kauffman, Tony Bellew, Dillian Whyte and Anthony Joshua. Hearn wasn’t on board with Fury taking a fight against Sefer Seferi, Manuel Charr, Mariusz Wach and then Joshua. Hearn wanted Fury to fight two of his Matchroom Boxing stable fighters in Bellew and Whyte BEFORE he would get a shot against Joshua. In other words, Fury would need to earn the fight against Joshua by fighting two of his Matchroom guys in Bellew and Whyte before he would get that fight.
It would have been a bad move for Fury to have to go through Bellew and Whyte for him to get a fight against Joshua. Those are tough fights for any ring rusty fighter. What would happen if Fury lost to one or both of them? The money that Fury would make fighting Bellew and Whyte would likely be chump change in comparison to the cash he’ll be getting for a fight against Wilder. Fury would be doing Hearn a BIG favor by fighting his Machroom stable guys Bellew and Whyte. Their popularity would be increased by Fury fighting them, and they would likely continue to bring in better money for Hearn for a long time to come.
I don’t see how that would benefit Fury by fighting Hearn’s stable guys Bellew and Whyte. Fury would be doing Hearn a favor by taking those fights. I can’t blame Fury for not wanting to have to help Hearn out by fighting those guys in order to get the Joshua fight. Why should a popular fighter like Fury have to fight Hearn’s less popular Matchroom stable fighters Bellew and Whyte just so he can get the Joshua fight.
”I gave him a plan of Travis Kauffman, Tony Bellew, Dillian Whyte, Anthony Joshua,” Hearn said about the four-fight deal that he offered Fury. ”He said he wanted four fights of low, low. He said he wants four fights [starting with] Sefer Seferi. He said, ‘Manuel Charr, then [Mariusz] Wach, and then I’ll fight AJ.’ I said, ‘I can’t give you those kinds of fights after Seferi.’ If he said to me, ‘I’ll do two and then AJ and Wilder, I’d have probably done it. But he said he wanted four.”
Hearn is kidding himself if he thinks Fury would want to go through his Matchroom stable to help them out so that he can fight Joshua. If Hearn wants Fury to fight Joshua, he’s going to need to forget about having any strings attached. He’ll need to make that fight without Fury jumping through numerous hoops in order to get it. Further, Hearn will need to forget about offering Fury 35 percent of the revenue for the fight. He’s going to need to come up to 50 percent if he wants him to agree to fight Joshua in a huge PPV fight.
”With Tyson Fury, he’s not a very confident guy,” Hearn said. ”He’s a smart guy. He’s not going to bluff himself into thinking he’s ready. That’s why I don’t think it happens, because he knows he’s not ready. So like I said, he’s either getting a fortune or he’s decided, ‘I’m going to go for it.’ It’s probably a bit of both. I believe he can get a lot better than he is now. Look at the fights that I was looking to get him: Travis Kauffman, he beats Travis Kauffman. Tony Bellew, you have to say he’s a favorite against Tony Bellew. Dillian Whyte is a tougher fight. There are levels to where I want him to fight at. If he [Fury] had committed to two of those fights and the other one, I would have agreed to it, yeah. He’s not even 60 percent of where he was when he fought Wladimir Klitschko. He looked awful. He had no punching power at all. He was slow. He was definitely getting the rounds in. He wasn’t trying to get Pianeta out of there, but he’s not a puncher. You can’t beat Deontay Wilder if you’re not a puncher. If he thinks he’s just going to out-box Wilder for 12 rounds, it’s not going to happen. Like I said, Deontay Wilder has to have a fight while Anthony Joshua is fighting [Alexander] Povetkin. This is the perfect fight,” Hearn said.
I think the reality is Hearn will be still chomping at the bit to get Fury to fight Joshua after he’s likely knocked out by Wilder later this year. Joshua vs. Fury is a fight that will sell under any circumstances just like the Joshua-Klitschko fight sold despite the fact that Wladimir was in his 40s, coming off of a 2-year layoff off and a loss to Fury. If that kind of fight sells to the British boxing public, then you can bet that the same fans would eat up a fight between Joshua and a recently knocked out Fury next year.
Since Hearn clearly doesn’t have any intentions in making the Joshua-Wilder fight, the options for Joshua in 2019 are dreadfully bad. The fans are NOT going to be excited to see Hearn trot out Whyte again for Joshua to fight again after having already knocked him out in 2015. Whyte hasn’t done anything to redeem himself, has he? Whyte should have arguably lost to Joseph Parker and Dereck Chisora. Whyte would have lost to Chisora with a better crew of judges working the fight, and he would have got lost the Parker fight if a higher quality referee had worked that fight.
