Deontay Wilder’s trainer, Malik Scott, has confirmed that talks have been ongoing to stage some huge heavyweight fights in Saudi Arabia.
TalkSPORT’s Simon Jordan first floated the theory this month when Anthony Joshua’s announced that he wouldn’t be back in the ring until December, despite claiming July not long before.
Jordan claimed that he had heard mutterings of the Middle East making moves to stage a four-man tournament that would see an undisputed heavyweight champion crowned. The two initial fights were reportedly to be Wilder versus Joshua and Tyson Fury versus Oleksandr Usyk.
Logistically speaking, there’s a whole host of issues to solve for fights that have pretty much all struggled in negotiations in the past. Having said that, the speculation was met with some excitement.
Scott, who has trained Wilder since his 2021 loss to Fury, has been keen to score a big fight for his man. He told IFL TV that the rumours were true.
“I’m on the inside of the meetings, Deontay has me sitting right next to him in these meetings. What I can say is that the things that people are hearing are not fibs, and that negotiations have begun, not with certain fighters but negotiations are intact.
Those fights people are mentioning, those headlines and those big cards, those ultimate fights, that type of boxing is about to be back on the menu.
The negotiations are true, everything is getting together, we’re going to see what happens and what fighters really want to fight that’s at that level and the ones that do Deontay Wilder’s going to knock out and become two time champion of the world.
I can say that those rumours are true, negotiations are going on and big fights are going to be happening in Saudi Arabia.”
Wilder was last in the ring in October of 2022 – a first round knockout over Robert Helenius. The former champion is now back in training and fans await an announcement.
Joshua returned to winning ways against America’s Jermaine Franklin this month, and was previously set to keep busy throughout the year with new coach, Derrick James, until announcing otherwise.
Usyk last fought in August, his second consecutive victory over ‘AJ’. He waited until Fury had dealt with a voluntary title defence over Derek Chisora in December to commence undisputed negotiations, which ultimately fell apart weeks ago.
Out of all four, Usyk is currently the only man who has made his intentions clear, having started talks with one of his mandatory challengers, Daniel Dubois.
If a wintertime tournament is ‘on the menu’, fans will have to deal with a period of inactivity from some of the biggest heavyweight names before seeing them in the ring together.
Whether that’s worth it to finally witness those bouts will be a personal opinion.