Eddie Hearn has sent Deontay Wilder a big offer – and he isn’t sure whether he’s received it.
The Matchroom head honcho has been talking about the 36-year-old in the wake of Anthony Joshua’s defeat at the hands of Oleksandr Usyk last weekend.
Hearn had previously offered Wilder (42-2-1, 41 KOs) a fight with Joshua when he was the WBA Super, IBF, IBO and WBO champion and prior to his September 2018 defence against Alexander Povetkin.
Joshua has since lost those titles to former undisputed cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk as well as his subsequent rematch with the Ukrainian, who has now called out Tyson Fury for an all-the-marbles showdown in the sport’s premier division.
Wilder, who has been out of the ring since being stopped a second time by current WBC king Fury (32-0-1, 23 KOs) in their trilogy showdown last October, is back in the ring on October 15 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
And Hearn is eager to work with the 2008 Olympic bronze medallist.
He told the DAZN Boxing Show:
“I had an offer to Deontay Wilder recently to take him to the Middle East
“I reached out to his team and told them that I had something that we should really discuss, this is a huge offer, and I never even heard back.
“It baffles me because I don’t even know if he was told about that email.
”It was a potential fight – could have been Dillian Whyte.”
Whyte, who was the number one contender with the WBC back in April when he was stopped by ‘The Gypsy King’ inside six rounds at Wembley Stadium in London, is keen to make a return to the ring sooner rather than later, looking to get back to winning ways after suffering his third knockout defeat in a career which has also seen him lose to the aforementioned duo of Joshua and Povetkin.
Hearn, who is working closely with Joshua to get him back to winning ways as he now has three defeats in his last five outings, added:
“That’s a fight [Whyte vs Wilder] we want to make for early 2023, but maybe Deontay Wilder just doesn’t want to deal with us and – that’s fine. As long as he’s aware of what he’s turning down then I respect that.
“We don’t know whether he is or isn’t getting the offers, but the reality is that the money [that is] there to fight Dillian Whyte, the money there to fight [Anthony Joshua] are the two biggest fights for him in the sport.
“Hopefully, we can open those discussions, but he may lose to Helenius.
“We know Chisora beat him really, Dillian Whyte beat him and he’s on a decent run. Deontay Wilder, we don’t know how his confidence has been affected and let’s see, it’ll be an interesting fight.”
Wilder recently expressed a willingness to take on the aforementioned Usyk for all the titles, but Fury – who has set a deadline of September 1 for the fight to be made after demanding a whopping £500million for the showdown – laughed off the idea, telling the American to “get to the back of the queue.”