By Scott Gilfoid: Deontay Wilder says he’s smoking Anthony Joshua out to get him to come out of hiding and finally face him. Wilder sees Joshua as someone that is afraid to fight him, and he wants to shame him enough to where he has no other choice but to take the fight.
Wilder’s method of smoking Joshua out could find legs if he beats the brakes off unbeaten former heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (27-0, 19 KOs) in their fight on December 1 on Showtime PPV at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) thinks he’ll possibly get Joshua (22-0, 21 KOs) to finally agree to fight him, but a lot of boxing fans aren’t so sure. They feel that Joshua and his promoter Eddie Hearn will continue to give low ball flat fee offers to Wilder in order not to fight him. The offers are so low that Wilder will never agree to them.
“I said I was going to smoke him out, and now it’s begun,” Wilder said to Fighthype about Joshua. “The people over here are waking up. He’s always talking about how he’s talking to us. Boxing is a gladiator sport. We’ve done everything to make this fight happen. If people want this fight to happen, it’s going to be up to the fans to make this fight happen. You already know what you’ve got to do to make it happen. When I fight Tyson Fury, it’s going to be a a difficult fight because of his style. In this fight, you have to be first. I’ll advise him not to get tired, because I don’t get tired,” Wilder said.
For Wilder to get the fight with Joshua, he’s going to need to keep beating the top heavyweights in the division. Hearn appears to be trying to corner the market in signing heavyweights. That’s going to make it tough for Wilder to fight guys like Whyte, Jarrell Miller and Oleksandr Usyk. Although Hearn is saying he wants to match Whyte against Wilder, it’s unlikely that he’s serious about that. Whyte is useful as a frequent opponent for Joshua to fight. Usyk and Miller will serve the same purpose. If Hearn puts them in with Wilder, they have a high probability of getting knocked out, and that would ruin their usefulness as occasional opponents for Joshua to fight.
It’s going to be hard to get Joshua to finally agree to fight Wilder. The problem may stem from the easy money Joshua is able to get fighting in the UK. The British fans don’t care that Joshua isn’t facing guys that are any threat to him. They’re still willing to see him fight each time. Since there’s no real pressure on Joshua and his wily promoter Hearn to make fights against talents like Wilder and Luis Ortiz, they’re taking the easy fights against the likes of 39-year-old Alexander Povetkin, Carlos Takam, Eric Molina and Charles Martin. Joshua’s next fight is likely going to be against retread opponent Dillian Whyte, who he already knocked out in 2015. There’s no real reason for Joshua to fight Whyte a second time other than the fact that the two are both signed with Matchroom Boxing, and they both are from the UK. The fans don’t seem to understand that they’re not getting the best against the best in fights like that. As such, Joshua is able to put Wilder on ignore and take the soft fights for the easy money.
There will come a time when Joshua and his promoter Hearn do take the fight with Joshua, but it’s not expected to happen on April 13 next year. That fight date is clearly pegged for an in house fight between Joshua and Whyte. It’s painfully obvious that Whyte is going to be the one that is facing Joshua for that fight date. Of course, that won’t stop Joshua and Hearn from name dropping Wilder’s name to get boxing fans thinking that he’ll be the one that will be facing him. Joshua’s Twitter poll in which Wilder won the overwhelming percentage of the votes and Joshua received just 5 percent suggests that the fans aren’t interested in seeing him fight retread opponent Whyte. The fan would new blood, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to get it.