With a victory for Anthony Joshua at the end of this month, there’s surely only one fight on the cards for the WBA, IBF and IBO heavyweight champion.
If, and it’s a big if, Joshua adds the WBO crown to his already impressive collection by defeating Joseph Parker in Cardiff on March 31, Deontay Wilder is almost certainly going to be the next port of call.
Wilder successfully defended his WBC heavyweight title with a remarkably exciting win over Luis Ortiz on Saturday night and given how close his schedule is to Joshua’s, a huge unification bout would make the most sense for both fighters.
Negotiations took place last year between Wilder’s camp and Joshua’s before interest cooled and ‘AJ’ decided to take on Parker instead.
Fresh from his stoppage of Ortiz, Wilder suggested that Joshua was ducking him and one of his managers, Shelly Finkel, has claimed that there has been no contact from the Brit’s team in several months.
He had to survive quite the scare https://t.co/kNFJKcvsOw
— JOE (@JOE_co_uk) March 4, 2018
Finkel met with Barry Hearn, owner of Matchroom Sport and father of Joshua’s promoter, Eddie, in late 2017 to discuss Joshua vs. Wilder.
Barry Hearn recommended that the fight take place in the Las Vegas and said: “because I can bring over 20,000 Brits who will spend more money just like they did for Ricky Hatton,” according to Finkel.
Finkel then produced an email signed by Eddie Hearn which was the last point of contact between the two camps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_YOBd7B5BU
“Glad you had a good chin wag with the old man,” Finkel quoted Eddie Hearn as saying. “I will get the respective profit and loss projections to you this week for discussion,” meaning what we would make in the U.K. and what we would make in Vegas. That was November 29. I’ve never heard from him since.”
The Parker fight was not confirmed until January so it’s clear that, for whatever reason, Joshua’s team favoured a clash with the Kiwi over ‘The Bronze Bomber’.
It does seem strange though for the conversation to go from a written promise to provide figures in order to make Joshua vs. Wilder a reality to complete radio silence.
Having said that, a victory for ‘AJ’ over Parker will almost certainly kickstart negotiations again.
