Eddie Hearn says one reason 6’6″ Robert Helenius didn’t price himself out for the fight with Anthony Joshua because he believe he can win on Saturday night on August 12th at the O2 Arena in London.
Helenius (32-4, 21 KOs) will need to let his hands go when he’s in punching range of Joshua on Saturday night because he was standing frozen much of the time.
Joshua will take advantage of Heleniu and likely knock him out quickly if he doesn’t let his shots go. Helenius has the power to KO Johuaa, but he’ll need to bee on the attack the whole time.
“Then it was a case of going through who was real because 99 of them weren’t real, but who we could move swiftly with to do a deal,” said Eddie Hearn to Boxing Social about what went into finding n opponent for Anthony Joshua to fight this Saturday night on August 12th.
“As I said in the previous interview, people don’t know, but actually, before Dillian Whyte accepted this fight, which we really didn’t think he would, we’d agree to terms with Robert Helenius, and we’d agreed terms with Agit Kabayel for the fight.
“Of course, those were the first two that we went to when this news broke. Yeah, he wanted double the money that we first agreed, and the budget wasn’t there, in all honesty,” said Hearn when asked if he was going to use Agit Kabayel as Joshua’s opponent for Saturday.
“Moving the fight from pay-per-view to just a normal Saturday night show, the budget wasn’t there to pay Kabayel double of what we first agreed. Helenius got more, but he didn’t price himself out of the fight because he wants to fight, and he thinks they think they can win.
“So he was the one we could move quickly with. I think he’s more credible. I think it still is a dangerous fight, but he’s the one who got the nod.
“Demsey McKean’s a southpaw. No fighter fighting a southpaw at this level on six days’ notice. Hrgovic was never discussed. He was never put forward by Kalle and the team for clear reasons
“Number one, for him to take that risk, they would have wanted too much money, but more importantly, he’s trained ten weeks for a southpaw, only done southpaw sparring prepared for Demsey McKean, and also, he has a shot at a world heavyweight title in his hands.
“All he has to do is beat Demsey McKean fights and Usyk or Dubois, but probably Usyk. So that wasn’t actually even discussed.
“Andy Ruiz posted on his Instagram and said he’d take the fight. Come on, in six days’ time. You know what he’s going to want, money. How difficult that deal is to do.
“Who else? Manuel Charr, he was someone who we were thinking about considering. He wanted, I think, three mil for the fight.
“We feel we got someone credible, someone AJ can showcase how good he’s looking and someone he can prepare for Deontay Wilder with,” said Hearn about Helenius.
