By Jake Tiernan: Promoter Eddie Hearn predicts next month’s Anthony Joshua vs. Dillian Whyte rematch will bring in a whopping 500,000 to 800,000 buys on DAZN PPV for their August 12th fight at the O2 Arena in London.
If Hearn’s vision of success for his creation comes true, he’s going to be over the moon, gloating over him, proving everyone wrong.
It’s still difficult to imagine there being 500K to 800k fans willing to plunk down $35 to see Joshua fight a guy that has been knocked out in two out of his last four fights and is coming off a robbery win over Jeermain Franklin.
Joshua is no better, having lost two out of his last three fights, and he looked timid & gunshy in his last fight. This fight should be complimentary, a freebie for the fans.
The reaction from boxing fans on social media to the Joshua-Whyte rematch announcement has been mostly negative, as Whyte has looked shopworn and no longer resembles a top-tier heavyweight.
Hearn cooked up the idea of the former two-time heavyweight champion Joshua (25-3, 22 KOs) using Whyte (29-3, 19 KOs) as his stay-busy opponent, putting at risk the $60 million that AJ will be getting from the Saudis in December against Deontay Wilder.
Will Joshua-Whyte bring in huge PPV totals?
“All that will be announced on Monday. That’s the pay-per-view price,” said Eddie Hearn to iFL TV about the 26.99 PPV cost on DAZN for the Anthony Joshua vs. Dillian Whyte II rematch event on August 12th.
It’s still unknown if the Joshua-Whyte 2 rematch will be shown DAZN PPV in the States & Canada. That would be an overreach big time. Is Joshua vs. Whyte worthy of being sold on PPV?
This writer doesn’t think it should because Whyte is beyond shot. He’s ready for the scrap heap, and Joshua isn’t far behind in being over the hill.
“You’ve got Usyk against Dubois two weeks later on pay-per-view,” said Hearn. “I don’t know what the price is. 24.95? You had AJ against Usyk; what was that? 24.95, 26? Whatever. That’s around the price point, so you know, forget DAZN. Don’t you think this fight would be Pay-per-view on Sky?”
Well, two wrongs don’t make a right. Just because the organizers of the Oleksandr Usyk vs. Daniel Dubois event have placed it on PPV doesn’t mean Hearn should do the same for the Joshua vs. Whyte II event, does it?
“Sky has been dying to do pay-per-views, and they can’t do any pay-per-views because they don’t have any Pay-Per-View fights,” Hearn said. “So this will be available on the Sky platform. This is going to do hundreds [of thousands of buys]. It’s a massive fight for DAZN.
“Anywhere between 500 and 800,000 [PPV buys]. It’s something like that. It’s an absolute monster,” said Hearn when asked for a prediction of buys for the Joshua vs. Whyte 2 rematch.
The numbers that Hearn has dreamed up in his head for the AJ vs. Dillian rematch sound totally unrealistic and more wishful thinking than anything.
It seems like Hearn’s mind is back in 2016 because that would have been the ideal time for Joshua & Whyte to meet again. They would have struck while the iron was still hot afteer their December 2015 match, which was only entertaining for the first two rounds.
“You wait until they come face to face at the press conference next week. It’s a huge one. I think that’s too many,” said Hearn when told that Frank Smith is predicting Joshua-Whyte brings in 800,000 to 1.2 million PPV buys. “I like his enthusiasm. 500-800,000 buys.”
Whyte’s passive-aggressive behavior = self-defeatingÂ
“It’s quite tough it’s quite tough for Dillian because he will feel like he hasn’t got enough money for this fight, and he may, in his head, like you saw with a Fury fight, not push it in the way that maybe he should,” said Hearn about Whyte potentially not helping to promote the fight with Joshua by not giving interviews and/or not speaking during the press conferences.
It would be infantile on Whyte’s part if he were to sulk, withhold, electing to stay silent during the entire promotion with Joshua to indirectly express his anger over not being given a bigger purse. Whyte did that during the promotion for his fight with Tyson Fury. Will Dillian choose not to help out with the promotion for the Joshua fight?
“At the same time, he will want to get into AJ’s head or attempt to, and he can’t do that without engaging, and he will feel that he has an advantage in doing that,” said Hearn.
“So probably the worst idea for Dillian Whyte is to stay quiet. He doesn’t have to intentionally promote it, but when these two come ahead, sparks are going to fly, and that’s the fight that Dillian Whyte needs to draw out of Anthony Joshua.
“Whyte needs to make this a street fight, and he needs to bring AJ to lose his head, lose his emotion, and just want to take him out, and that’s what he wants to do. AJ is smart and a talented fighter. He wants to knock Dillian out and vice versa. They’re right up for it,” said Hearn.
