Promoter Eddie Hearn is currently in New York as he prepares for Matchroom’s first ever show in the US headlined by Danny Jacobs and Luis Arias. As reported earlier, Hearn also has an important business to attend to as he meets with Deontay Wilder’s management team today, Thursday.
The hype behind Joshua-Wilder is there but it still lacks build up and promoting. Wilder is not a household name in the US despite him being the WBC World heavyweight champion. He needs a big fight that will be promoted with a great deal of interest and that can only happen against Anthony Joshua.
In an interview with boxingscene.com, Hearn discussed how Wilder has to do a lot of self promoting and use Joshua’s name in order get more publicity for himself and for the upcoming fight between the two.
“I feel for him. He’s a one man band commercially. He’s doing all driving of his profile himself. The other night the phoned ‘Tha Boxing Voice’ himself to get himself heard. That’s the job of a promoter or a publicist. He’s actually proactively doing it himself. He’s doing a great job using Anthony’s [Joshua] name, I don’t mean this with disrespect, to grow interest and raise his own profile. And I believe his profile is growing,” said Hearn.
Hearn then talked about how he has a ‘duty’ to make Joshua-Wilder live up to the eventual hype, but not make the same mistake that was done with Mayweather-Pacquiao in prolonging the fight too far.
“We have a duty to make this fight as big as possible. It’s not as big now as will be in March. It’s not as big in March as it will be in July and it’s not as big in July as it will be in November. But it has to happen in 2018 because sometimes you miss the boat and the opportunity to make it happen when it really matters and that is kind of very soon.
“You look at Mayweather-Pacquiao, that fight was made at the perfect time for numbers and for dollars. But not the perfect time for fans and in terms of the elite-elite. So we mustn’t make that mistake, but we also want to make some dollars at the same time. It is the biggest in world boxing and I want to make the biggest fight in world boxing,” explained Hearn.
Thursday this week Hearn will sit down with Wilder’s management team, Shelly Finkel and notable boxing figure Al Haymon.
“I’m sitting down with the Shelly Finkel and Al Haymon. I think there’s about two or three managers that he’s [Deontay] got. I reached out to Deontay just to confirm who should I talk to – Al Haymon and Shelly Finkel. So they are the people I reached out to. We know we’re going to have to pay Deontay Wilder a lot more than his value in this fight. If we gave him his true value in this fight against Anthony Joshua, he [Wilder] would deem it as an insult. So we have to find somewhere between reality and fantasy,” he said.
Hearn also spoke about how this is not the first time they have had to over pay opponents to fight Joshua.
“We are prepared to over pay, to get the fight, to get the title and to give the fans what they want. Joshua’s had to do it his whole career. Look at what he had to pay Charles Martin, look at what the had to pay Pulev. Pulev was on more money and Takam was on more money than Deontay Wilder gets and he was only a mandatory challenger.
“So we are constantly overpaying people because of the money, pot, and the attraction that Anthony Joshua is. We’re not going to be disrespectful and say ‘here’s ten percent you’re lucky to get it mate’, but we just need some common sense. And if there’s commons sense, there will be a fight,” told the promoter.
Joshua hasn’t really taken note of Wilder’s call outs publically since there even hasn’t been an official offer made by anyone so far. The WBA, IBF & IBO champion has stayed humble and very respectful, but we might get to see another side of Joshua as the fight gets closer.
“When this gets made, you will see a different side to Joshua. But at the moment, he watches his [Wilder] performance and he finds it hard to take Deontay Wilder seriously because he’s never really boxed anyone of note. Don’t ever question the ability or heart of Anthony Joshua to step into challenges. Anthony Joshua is not the type who will say ‘I’ll knock Deontay Wilder out’, he knows he will do it, he believes it. He’s humble and that’s just the way it is. He’s not going to change.”
But Hearn himself obviously has no issue fighting fire with fire verbally.
“I’ll say it, Anthony Joshua knocks out Deontay Wilder every day of the week including twice on Sunday,” summarised the promoter.
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