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Deontay Wilder blasts Eddie Hearn for trying to make a fight between him and Anthony Joshua as ‘insurance’, with ‘Bronze Bomber’ insisting his purse demands have gone up after Usyk loss
- Deontay Wilder blasted Eddie Hearn for trying to set up an Anthony Joshua fight
- AJ was preparing for Oleksandr Usyk rematch when Hearn asked Wilder’s team
- Wilder thinks it showed a lack of confidence in Joshua ahead of the fight
- The Alabama boxer returns to the ring in October against Robert Helenius
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Deontay Wilder has blasted Eddie Hearn for lacking confidence in Anthony Joshua, and trying to make a fight between the pair before the Oleksandr Usyk rematch had even taken place.
The Alabama heavyweight thinks Hearn, the head of Matchroom Boxing, reached out to his team as a contingency plan ahead of Saturday’s fight in Saudi Arabia, which Usyk won with a split decision.
Wilder has now gone on record to say that he wants more money in the purse after the Brit’s defeat last weekend.
In the build-up to the Jeddah fight, Hearn confirmed he reached out to manager Shelly Finkel about a potential Wilder-Joshua match-up, half a decade after initial preliminary talks went nowhere, but got no response.
Deontay Wilder blasted Eddie Hearn for trying to persuade him to fight Anthony Joshua
Hearn said he reached out to Wilder’s manager last week, before AJ’s loss to Oleksandr Usyk
Shortly after Joshua’s loss, 36-year-old Wilder, also known as The Bronze Bomber, tweeted: ‘They tried to lock me in for insurance because they knew he wasn’t going to Win. This is strictly a business. Not a sport there’s a different (sic).’
Wilder later told ESNews: ‘Eddie Hearn coming to us after everything is over with my fight and stuff like that, talking about offering a deal.
‘And my thing was, we’re busy. For me, it was easy to see what was going on. Boxing is solely a business, not a sport… It’s strictly a business. You understand what I’m saying? It’s strictly business. I have a lot of stories. With briefcases being thrown.
Wilder felt that Hearn’s decision to try and arrange a fight showed his lack of faith in Joshua
‘He was trying to contact us for reassurance. All of a sudden you wanted to make a fight because even yourself don’t have confidence in your own fighter that he was going to win.
‘For me he was just trying to make a deal to insure that he can lock something in. But the thing about it, when you lose, that price goes up. You know what I mean? You ain’t gonna get a solid deal, locked in.’
Wilder is set for his first fight in over a year when he faces Robert Helenius in New York on October 15. It will be his first return since he was knocked out by Tyson Fury in their WBC title bout in Nevada last October.