By Charles Brun: Eddie Hearn responded to WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder’s critical remarks about Anthony Joshua’s performance last Saturday against Andy Ruiz Jr. by mentioning amount of tickets he sold for his last fight against Luis Ortiz on November 23 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Hearn’s decision to minimize Wilder’s value as a fighter by mentioning the amount of tickets his last fight with Ortiz sold is the same thing that he did when going through the motions in trying and negotiate a unification fight between him and Joshua.
Hearn rips Wilder
“Anthony Joshua just put on a public exhibition, and schooled a heavyweight champion,” said Hearn to IFL TV in response to Wilder’s criticism of AJ’ performance against Ruiz. “We spent too much energy and time talking about Wilder who, in the grand scheme of things, has just boxed in America at Las Vegas and sold 7,000 f— tickets, and did 100,000 buys on pay-per-view. No-one gives a monkey’s about Wilder. Sorry, it’s true.”
We should have seen this coming from Hearn after last night, because he said this to Sky Sports moments after Joshua’s win over Ruz:
“We’re not going to give him [WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder] the air time,” said Hearn.
What this could mean for boxing fans is Hearn using Wilder’s ticket sales number is the Joshua fight will never happen. As long as Hearn is pointing to Wilder’s ticket numbers as a reason to devalue him, the fight won’t get made.
Does Hearn want Joshua to fight Wilder?
Hearn continually mentioned the amount of tickets Wilder sales, and using that as an argument for why he doesn’t deserve an even split. What this will lead to is Hearn failing to negotiate the Joshua-Wilder fight. It’s easy for Hearn to blame Wilder for the fight not getting made, but he has to take ownership if he’s looking at him as not being on Joshua’s level in terms of ticket sales.
Wilder said this to @TheAthleticBox about Joshua’s win over Ruiz:
“Joshua did what he had to do to get the win. He ran around the ring and was on his bike all day. I’m not coming in, after losing to this guy, to just dance, grab, jab, hold. How can no-one say I’m not the best in the world now?”
Deontay said what a lot of boxing fans were saying about Joshua (23-1, 21 KOs) by pointing out that he was on the move much of the fight with Ruiz last Saturday, and doing a lot of grabbing. Joshua won the fight, but he didn’t look out of this world great, and he didn’t avenge his loss to the American Andy in an outstanding manner.
What boxing fans are saying is Joshua went into the Wladimir Klitschko mode to win. Some are even calling Joshua, ‘Anthony Klitschko’ after his win, given the way he used his fighting style the entire fight against Ruiz.