Eddie Hearn doesn’t believe the offer from Tyson Fury to face Anthony Joshua carries much sincerity but has admitted that AJ wants the fight.
The Matchroom Boxing head honcho was out in Jeddah to witness Joshua’s defeat at the hands of Oleksandr Usyk last month.
Joshua lost an inexplicable split decision against the Ukrainian at the Jeddah Superdome in Saudi Arabia and, after going on a bizarre post-fight rant, stated that he wanted to get back to winning ways sooner rather than later.
Tyson Fury, the current WBC champion and ‘AJ’s’ fellow Brit, called out the 32-year-old to a potential December showdown, with Joshua responding to the ‘offer’ by telling him to contact his management team 258.
But Hearn, who has promoted Joshua since he turned over in October 2013 after winning Olympic gold in London a year earlier, is sceptical about the call-out, even though he says Joshua would take the fight.
Hearn, when speaking to talkSPORT on Tuesday, said:
“I had a chat last night with George Warren. I’d love to get really excited about this. Don’t forget we signed for this fight last year. It’s an interesting one, but the message is quite clear from AJ – he wants the fight.”
“If that fight is there and they’re serious get the details and offer over to us and I’ll take it to AJ. We didn’t expect this opportunity and we’ll definitely look at it. Let’s take the cynic away and see what we get back from the Fury camp.”
Fury (32-0-1, 23 KOs) is promoted in the UK by Frank Warren of Queensberry and had previously agreed to a fight with Joshua last year.
It was thought that ‘The Gypsy King’, who was last in action in April when he stopped mandatory challenger Dillian Whyte inside six rounds at Wembley Stadium in London, would wait for an all-the-marbles showdown against the aforementioned Usyk, who holds the WBA Super, IBF, IBO, WBO and Ring Magazine titles.
But after Usyk decided he wanted to wait until after Christmas to take that fight due to still nursing injuries from last month’s return win over Joshua, Fury has called on the former two-time unified global ruler to fill a spot in December.
Hearn added:
“Fury’s outstanding at getting the public to believe absolute nonsense. Over the last two or three weeks, it’s been unbelievably bizarre.
“The big problem for Fury is the Usyk fight. Personally, I don’t think he’s serious about it but like I said, ‘AJ’ would have no problem about taking this fight in December.”