“AJ wants to Fight This Year and He Will Fight” – Eddie Hearn Adds Some Clarity

by Kris Anthony (krisanthonyboxing@gmail.com)

With Alexander Povetkin’s KO of Dillian Whyte helping the well documented heavyweight mess of who was to fight who with the circle of Joshua, Fury, Pulev, Wilder and Whyte…all eyes are now on Joshua vs Pulev and Fury vs Wilder III. Both sets of fights are seemingly headed for December.

Anthony Joshua has not fought since regaining his titles from Andy Ruiz in December and his promoter Eddie Hearn clarifies some of the confusion that still lingers:

“AJ wants to fight this year and he will fight,” Hearn told the Sun.

“Hopefully by December we will be in a situation where we can have a full, or close-to-full, O2. Because when you talk about no crowds causing a hole in budgets, his is around £5 million. But he will fight, he has to, otherwise it will be a year out of the ring. We have to get him back in 2020.

“I would put him on behind closed doors now, yes. The numbers wouldn’t be as good but he is prepared to do it.

“Right now, the plan is still to fight Pulev, as he is the mandatory challenger,” Hearn added.

“But this situation has put everything up in the air and there are a lot of moving parts. Joshua wants to fight Fury but he wants the WBC belt more.”

Whyte losing to Povetkin moved one hurdle out of the equation, two more pieces are still left to go. Fingers crossed, Joshua fights Pulev and wins. Fury fights Wilder for the third time (pffft) and wins. If this was all to go to plan, Joshua can then fight Fury for all the titles and then defend (whoever wins) all the belts against the winner of the rematch between Whyte and Povetkin (the Whyte camp are aiming for November).

Hopefully there will be ONE champion with nobody moaning about mandatory’s. Fighters happy, governing bodies happy and more importantly, the fans will be happy.

We can only hope.