Eddie Hearn says that if he doesn’t get a response from Deontay Wilder’s team soon, he and Anthony Joshua will move on to a fight against WBA mandatory Alexander Povetkin.
While the Wilder camp has gone quiet with negotiating a fight with Anthony Joshua, Eddie Hearn has also been speaking with Alexander Povetkin’s team and Hearn has stated that a deal is “close” with the Russian. Former champion Povetkin knocked out David Price emphatically to win the WBA final eliminator in March, this win has now made him mandatory challenger to Joshua’s WBA belt.
Since Wilder’s team made a 50 million offer to fight Anthony Joshua, Matchrooom’s promoter responded with a counter-offer and warns that the offer won’t be on the table forever and they move in a different direction if needed.
Eddie Hearn said: “They have our offer so they have to accept it or move on. It’s not a case of if you don’t accept this offer the fight is dead, we will just fight Povetkin and carry on our negotiations to the next one”.
Although Eddie Hearn didn’t reveal the finer details of the counter-offer, he is adamant that he won’t wait much longer. Most of those involved in boxing and all the fans around the world would love to see Joshua and Wilder go at it to become unified heavyweight champion of the world. However, getting the deal done is proving difficult.
Anthony Joshua has previously stated a mega-fight against the American needs to be staged in the UK, maybe the Principality Stadium in Wales.
He will be meeting up Shelly Finkel and will try to thrash out a deal which makes both sides happy, this comes five weeks after Wilder’s team offered $50m. Hopefully we will see historic unification showdown in place.
“I don’t like making deadlines because sometimes it gets people’s backs up but at some stage soon we have to make a decision,” said Hearn.
“We are close to closing a deal with Povetkin with (Andrey) Robinsky and World of Boxing and once the deal is closed, there is no Deontay Wilder.
Eddie Hearn is looking to get AJ back out in September and ideally a fight against Wilder is the no 1 choice, his dad Barry is in New York for talks with Deontay Wilder’s representatives this week.
“Wilder has had the latest offer from us for the last two weeks which was our improved offer and we are still talking to them and in fact, my dad is out in New York at the moment, and he might be meeting with Shelly Finkel.
“They have our offer so they have to accept it or move on. It’s not a case of if you don’t accept this offer the fight is dead, we will just fight Povetkin and carry on our negotiations to the next one.
“It has to be the next one, or the one after that. Joshua wants to fight. We’ve got an opportunity to go in September and Josh is keen to fight in that month and if Wilder wants it, it’s there.
“But I do still believe Wilder will take this offer.”
With Eddie Hearn refusing to have the fight in the US, AJ doesn’t want to be on the wrong side of a dodgy decision from the judges in the States. There have been a few lately and too much would be at stake. This is proving a stumbling block in negotiations, while they have offered AJ a guaranteed $50 million, Eddie Hearn won’t budge on having the fight outside the UK.
Watch is space…..