Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder has been advertised by all involved as next up.
The match-up between the two big hitters would be huge. Both Joshua and Wilder have been world champions, and both have suffered tough back-to-back defeats to current title holders, Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury respectively.
Despite all the positive moves to make the fight happen in Saudi Arabia, Tony Bellew recently revealed rumours that it was now Tyson Fury ‘AJ’s team were talking to, and that the Wilder negotiations had stopped.
Speaking to Boxing Social, Hearn assessed the many rumours around potential heavyweight fights.
“If you read Twitter it’s ‘AJ-Wilder might not happen, it might be AJ-Fury, Fury might fight Usyk or Usyk might fight Hrgovic’. To be honest, any of those things are possible, that’s the reality of the situation.”
The promoter then stated that his main intention is still to arrange the fight with Wilder, and said that there were ‘not really’ any conversations with Fury’s team.
“Our fight with Wilder hasn’t changed in the last three or four days since we sat down. Are there conversations about Fury-AJ? Not really. Would Saudi be interested? Yeah, I think so.
From my position, we want to just try and nail the Wilder fight. The Wilder fight is the one we’ve been talking about for a few months now and we want to try and progress it.”
He then revealed that Joshua is keen to fight again soon, hopefully against Wilder but that’s not nailed on.
“AJ Wants to fight, he’s really enjoying the activity. If he can’t fight in January I think I think you’ll see him in December. But still, our intention is to close the Wilder deal.”
The boxing world eagerly awaits confirmation of what would be a superb match-up, with fresh memories of disappointment in the heavyweight division still lingering.