Eddie Hearn says he’s working on the assumption that the Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua fight will go ahead, even though he still has a plan B if all else fails.
Joshua accepted Fury’s offer to box on December 3 in Cardiff, taking the bottom end of a 60-40 split in purses, with a rematch clause at 50-50. As of Wednesday night, the contract had yet to come through, but Hearn, Joshua’s promoter, says he is confident the fight will go ahead and Joshua is already in training camp at Loughborough for the fight. .
“You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes: is this a ploy to speed up the Usyk fight and get more money from a site? It could be anything,” Hearn said.
“But right now I’m going along the line that I believe them because I want to be positive and try to work together to make this happen.”
Fury’s offer to Joshua on social media came out of the blue after Joshua lost his rematch to Oleksandr Usyk, before the Ukrainian said he didn’t want to face Fury in an undisputed world title fight until next year.
“We hadn’t anticipated anything,” Hearn said. “Then George Warren called me up and said ‘you’re serious, what do you think?’
“I said ‘I don’t know, are you serious because I don’t believe you?’
“I talked to AJ and George said we would have an offer. We got an offer and George and I agreed that we would keep everything a secret and the next thing Fury told everyone was the offer on social media.
“We came back and said we can’t do November but we would take Dec 17th and we said we take 60-40 but would like to turn it around for the rematch if AJ wins. They came back and said no to the flip and it has to be November 26 or December 3, if you don’t agree with all that there is no fight.
“So I went back to AJ and said, ‘I have no idea if they’re genuine, but if they are, these are the only terms they’ll agree to.’ She said ‘OK, if they’re lying we’ll find out, but I want to fight.’
“If they are genuine, and George tells me they are, I think the fight is over.
“I think George feels like his instructions are to make the fight, but you never know with Tyson Fury. If he really wants the fight… We couldn’t have done more. We just said we would agree to all the terms.”
“It could have been a bluff or a bit of publicity that actually turned into the fight. Or maybe it was genuine from the beginning. Or maybe it’s a ploy to get more money out of another situation, I don’t know.” “
Hearn doesn’t anticipate any trouble for the two boxers’ broadcasters, BT Sport and DAZN, to come to an agreement and said Joshua was eager to get the chance to face Fury.
“I think he’s just thinking, ‘I always wanted to fight Tyson Fury,’” Hearn said. “He signed for the fight before anything Wilder related. He thinks this is the only chance he has to fight Tyson Fury. ‘It would have been better to come out of a win, but we’re here and I think I can beat him and I feel good.’ He imagines the possibilities of it, he is ready to roll the dice.
“It’s a win-win for AJ. People think it’s fair game to step up and the other side of the coin is if he wins.”
The pair were expected to meet in the summer of 2021 for the undisputed world heavyweight title in Saudi Arabia, before an American judge ordered Fury to face Deontay Wilder.
There will be a lot less money on the table now, although the UK pay-per-view box office will be massive.
“They will make less than they would have made in Saudi Arabia, but they are still making a lot of money,” Hearn said.
“I don’t know many people who follow the sport who don’t watch this fight. This does over 2 million purchases comfortably.”
Hearn’s original plan had been for Joshua to return to the ring on December 17 and he says that will still happen if the Fury fight falls through.
“My biggest concern is, and what I will not allow to happen, I will not allow AJ to fight in December because we made the decision that he would fight in December,” Hearn said.
“I’ll also work on December 17 while we go because I can’t put AJ’s future in the hands of Tyson Fury. While we will be as positive as we can be, as helpful as we can be, I need to have a Plan B up my sleeve because this might not happen.”
Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was a boxing correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001 to 2019, covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights around the world. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications around the world since the 1980s.
