By Scott Gilfoid: According to Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn, WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder can earn the 50-50 purse that he craves for a unification fight against IBF/WBA/WBO champion Anthony Joshua if he defeats former unified champion Tyson Fury in an impressive fashion and the fight brings in 1 million pay-per-view buys. However, the chances of Fury-Wilder bringing anything close to 1 million buys are slim at best. Whether Wilder faces Fury is now up in the air, according to Dan Rafael. He says Fury is now balking at the idea of facing Deontay. Oh well, maybe there’s someone else out there that wants the fight with Wilder if Fury doesn’t fancy it.
If the fight pulls in 400,000 buys, it would be doing well. As of now, Hearn says his $15 million flat fee offer to Wilder, which is said to have agreed to for a rejected September 2018 fight against Joshua, is still on the table for him to sign for a match next year on April 13. Hearn says he will revisit that offer and possibly sweeten it if Wilder shines in beating the 29-year-old Fury (27-0, 19 KOs).
“We’d still be the A-side but Wilder would increase his value in the fight,” A stubborn sounding Hearn said to Tha Boxing Voice when asked if Deontay would get a bump up in pay from the $15 million flat fee for a Joshua fight if he beats Fury. ”I think it raises his profile in the U.S. Everybody wants to see Joshua-Wilder fight. It’s got to do $1 million buys for it to be a 50-50 fight,” Hearn said about Wilder’s fight against Fury to do in order for him to get 50 percent of the purse for a match against Joshua.
I don’t think it really matters whether Joshua is the perceived A-side in the negotiations for a fight against the Wilder fight. The Joshua-Wilder fight isn’t going to get made until Hearn gives Wilder a 50 percent cut of the green. What the wily Hearn doesn’t seem to realize is that Joshua’s popularity is likely going to start to erode in a major way if he fails to fight Wilder. The hardcore boxing fans are well aware of the recent news of Joshua turning down $50 million to fight Wilder, and they see him as the one that is blocking the fight from taking place. Fans don’t mind seeing Joshua beat soft jobs, but they want him to step it up finally and face Wilder. Hearn can’t the boxing public by feeding Joshua easy opposition like 38-year-old Alexander Povetkin, Dillian Whyte, Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller, Joseph Parker, Carlos Takam and 41-year-old Wladimir Klitschko. Wilder is the guy the fans want to see Joshua fight, and if Hearn doesn’t give them what they’re asking for, they’re going to be furious.
“Dillian Whyte,” Hearn said when asked who Joshua’s No.2 option is for his April 13 fight next year if Wilder or Fury doesn’t take the fight. ”I want Dillian to get his shot at a world title. I feel that with what he’s done and who he’s beaten and he’s held the number one position for so long that he should have gotten his shot against Wilder. My job for Dillian Whyte is to deliver him a world title shot. I prefer that is against Wilder than Joshua, but now Dillian Whyte vs. Joshua is a really big fight,” Hearn said.
I hate to say it but it’s pretty much academic at this point that Joshua is going to be fighting fellow Matchroom stable-mate Dillian Whyte (24-1, 17 KOs) on April 13 next year rather than the winner of the Wilder vs. Fury fight. Joshua vs. Whyte is the fight that Hearn seems to be chomping at the bit to make. It would be an in house fight for Hearn in pitting Joshua against Whyte, who he already knocked out in the 7th round 2 1/2 years ago in 2015. Hearn has rebuilt Whyte’s career by feeding him David Allen, Ian Lewison, Malcolm Tann, Ivica Bacurin, Robert Helenius, Lucas ‘Big Daddy’ Browne, Dereck Chisora and Joseph Parker. Whyte would have likely lost to Parker and Chisora with better judging and referee.
”At the moment the offer is still on the table of a $15 million flat fee,” Hearn said about the flat fee offer he made to Wilder to fight Joshua on April 13. ”If he fights Fury and if that fight ever happens and it does big pay-per-view numbers and he looks good and gets a big win, we will revisit the offer. At the moment, the fight is there to be signed and the offer that he accepted,” Hearn said.
At the moment, the Wilder vs. Fury fight still is unsigned for November and it’s unclear whether he match will happen at all. According to Dan Rafael of ESPN, Fury is starting to have second thoughts about taking the fight with Wilder. Hopefully this isn’t true because it would be a real pity if that’s the case, but you certainly couldn’t blame the 6’9” Fury if that turns out to be the truth. Fury can probably make a lot more loot fighting Joshua than he can Wilder, and he does need to take more tune-ups for him to be properly ready for the match. I wouldn’t take the fight with Wilder if I was Fury. It’s too hard of a fight, especially given Fury’s long 2 ½ year layoff from boxing that he had after his career-best victory over Wladimir Klitschko in 2015.
Rafael said this during his chat last Friday at ESPN:
I think you have to make Wilder the favorite but can Fury win? Sure. But the latest from Fury’s team is that he is now apparently balking at the fight. I was told that yesterday by a member of his management team.”
So there it is. Fury is starting to get cold feet at the idea of fighting Wilder. Given the announcement that Fury made about the Wilder fight after his recent win over Francisco Pianeta on August 18, it would look incredibly bad if he doesn’t take the fight with Wilder. The boxing fans are now expecting Fury to take the fight with Deontay, and if he doesn’t go through with the fight, they fans are going to brand him a coward for getting cold feet and deciding to take the safe route by veering away towards safer waters. The way that Fury has been shaming Joshua for dodging the fight with Wilder, it’s going to make him look like a hypocrite in the eyes of fans if he opts not to take the fight. I can’t say I’ll be surprised because Fury has flapped his gums in the past about wanting to fight guys like David Haye and the fight never happened. Hearn has expressed his own doubts about Fury taking the fight with Wilder. Hearn will come across looking like Nostradamus if Fury chooses not to take the fight with Wilder, and he can then royally gloat about it. From Fury’s perspective, I guess it would be better to be laughed at for backing out of the Wilder fight than it would be for him to take the fight and get knocked cold in the first four rounds.
”Massive, massive,” Hearn said about the kind of interest there would be from the British boxing public in a fight between Joshua and Tyson Fury if Fury beats Wilder in November. ”It’s [Joshua-Fury] not as big a global fight as Joshua-Wilder. It’s always been a bigger UK fight than Joshua-Wilder, but it would need to be a significant fight.”
It would be better for Hearn if Fury beats Wilder, because he would have a safer fight for him to make for Joshua. Fury can’t punch and he has slow hand speed. It would be a much easier fight for Joshua to win than if he were have to face a guy with the speed, size and power of Wilder.
”When he came to us the plan was for him to have one or two fights and then challenge for a title,” Hearn said of Demetrius Andrade. ”He got the mandatory for Billy Joe Saunders. He said, ‘I can’ turn it down,’ because if he wins the fight, he’s going to have all those guys [Gennady Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez] that you just mentioned,” Hearn said.
If Andrade beats Saunders, he might get a shot at facing IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin, but not Saul Canelo Alvarez. Golovkin wants to win the World Boxing Organization title badly enough for him to face a southpaw like Andrade, but Alvarez likely won’t bother. He doesn’t care about winning all the titles.
Demetrius Andrade is a good signing for Hearn’s Matchroom stable. However, Andrade is facing a clever fighter in WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders, and he’s coming off of a one-year layoff in taking that fight. Andrade hasn’t been active enough to keep his skills up, and he’s facing one of the best middleweights in the division in Saunders. Andrade is likely to lose the fight.
“Everybody is trying to keep up with us,” Hearn said about ESPN and Top Rank trying to keep up with his DAZN platform. ”They’re going to have to have very deep pockets. That’s definitely the plan to have to put a lot of UK fighters on the card. Two UK fighters are already challenging for world titles on October 6. Callum Johnson is fighting [Artur] Beterbiev, and Gavin McDonnell is fighting Danny Roman. You’ll see even more Irish and British fighters on the October 20 Boston card,” Hearn said.
I’m not sure that the American boxing fans are going to get excited right away in seeing UK fighters on the DAZN cards, as the guys that Hearn is putting on the cards are likely to lose their fights. I mean, Callum Johnson is a slugger, who is facing one of the best talents in the light heavyweight division in IBF champion Artur Beterbiev on October 6 in Boston. Callum Johnson has done well at the European level in his fights, but he’s never been in there with anyone with the kind of talent that Beterbiev possesses. It’s going to be a major step up in class for Johnson when he faces Beterbiev in October, and it’s likely that he won’t be ready for that type of fighter. McDonnell is going to have an equally tough time facing Danny Roman. That’s a bad match-up for McDonnell.
”We definitely need one or two marquee names and they are inevitable,” Hearn said about him eventually signing one or two top stars to his Matchroom Boxing USA stable to televise on his DAZN platform. ”We [Hearn and Mikey Garcia] had a very good conversation on Sunday. He’s a very smart guy, and he’s been made a huge offer that he knows is huge, and we’ll see what it goes,” Hearn said.
Mikey will be taking a risk in signing with Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing stable, because he might not be seen by as many fans in the U.S if the American fans fail to subscribe in high enough numbers for him to be seen. Mikey might end up being seen by only a small amount of fans in the last few years of his prime. If Hearn’s deal with DAZN goes up in smoke after 2 years, then Mikey will be once again a free agent, but in this case he would be getting up there in age and possibly not the same fighter he is now.
”I have a meeting with Manny’s advisers in Boston tomorrow morning,” Hearn said about negotiating a fight between Pacquiao and Amir Khan for later this year.
Hearn is rumored to be interested in signing Pacquiao to his Matchroom stable for him to fight on DAZN. Adding the 39-year-old Pacquiao to his DAZN stable would give Hearn the one big marquee name that he needs for him to bring in subscribers in the first year of his 8-year deal with the streaming platform. It’s imperative that Hearn bring in good numbers right off the bat with DAZN by signing some top names. Hearn is trying to sign WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia (39-0, 30 KOs) to his Matchroom stable, but the negotiations have been slow. If Hearn can add Garcia and Pacquiao to DAZN, then he would be doing well.
Despite the talk of wanting to ink Manny Pacquiao, Hearn hopes that the Amir Khan vs. Kell Brook fight will take place in December. That’s what Hearn’s wish is. Khan will have a lot to say about that though, because he REALLY wants the Pacquiao fight. That’s a fight that Khan has been after for almost a decade now, and if he doesn’t get it in the next year, he could wind up missing out on it forever. There’s nothing wrong with Brook as an opponent, but he doesn’t bring in the same kind of attention worldwide as former eight division world champion Pacquiao does.
”Hopefully December,” Hearn said about his desire to make the Amir Khan vs. Kell Brook fight this year. ”Amir Khan fights [Samuel] Vargas on September 8.”