Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk have finally put pen to paper on a fight to crown the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis back in 2001 – and Matchroom promoter, Eddie Hearn, has reacted positively to the news.
Fury and Usyk looked set to face each other earlier in the year at Wembley stadium after the Ukrainian accepted a 30% purse split, but talks suddenly collapsed due to rematch financials.
Unbeknown to the rest of the boxing world, negotiations had continued in the background and news broke this week of a reported agreement, followed shortly by confirmation from both teams.
The fight will take place in Saudi Arabia, a region Eddie Hearn knows well, having put on the Anthony Joshua-Usyk rematch there.
Reacting to the fight announcement to Boxing Social, Hearn said the fight was good for boxing and is pushing him want to make more big clashes.
“Fantastic, I hope it happens and I believe it will. Whenever there is a huge amount of money on the table he [Fury] is going to take the fight. It’s a great fight for the division, like I said, I hope it happens. I don’t know when it will happen, I guess my gut feeling is January but could be December 23. I think it’s great for boxing.
I think it puts a little bit of pressure on UK boxing. It makes me want to do the Benn-Eubank fight more in the UK, but obviously that’s out of our hands.
When big fights start happening, I think it makes other fights more likely, because when I saw that news I was like ‘we’ve got to make AJ against wilder and Eubank against Benn’, it’s a natural reaction.”
Fury-Usyk will take place during Riyadh season in Saudi Arabi, providing ‘The Gypsy King’ comes through unscathed against Francis Ngannou on October 28.