Eddie Hearn is understandably upset at seeing the Anthony Joshua vs. Tyson Fury deal that he worked on for the last five months to finish go up in smoke after learning that Fury had lost his arbitration case with Deontay Wilder.
What bothers Hearn is how Fury’s team gave up on the Joshua fight right away upon him losing the arbitration case.
Hearn says he spoke to Fury’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank and asked him if he would try and make a step aside deal with former WBC heavyweight champion to preserve the Joshua-Fury fight for August 14th; he said he wasn’t going to do that. Arum just wanted to go with the rematch with Wilder rather than trying to put together a step aside.
Eddie said he’d been assured by Fury’s team all along that the arbitration case that was pending at the time wouldn’t get in the way of the Joshua fight, as they believed that he would win.
So instead of Hearn waiting until the case was over, he went ahead and began months of negotiations with Fury, as well as looking for a site deal to stage the contest.
Hearn angry about Joshua-Fury deal collapsing
“I phoned Bob Arum, and he said, ‘I can’t believe it, you’re not going to believe it, just a ridiculous decision, we lost the arbitration, I can’t believe it,'” said Hearn to iFL TV about learning that the Joshua vs. Fury fight was off for August 14th.
“I said, ‘What the f*** is going on?’ And he [Arum] said, ‘No one saw this coming.’ I said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ And he said, ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘What’s your next move?’ And he went, ‘We’re fighting Wilder.’
“I said, ‘Hold on, there’s got to be a deal to be done.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to try something.’ ‘Ah, they’re not going to be interested in that. We’re just going to fight Wilder, and then we can do our fight later.’
“I was shell-shocked. I thought, ‘I’ve spent five months of my life being told that I can’t do something. I’ve worked, I haven’t given up, and I’ve done it, and you’ve told me all along that this arbitration process would have absolutely no bearing on AJ against Fury, and then all of a sudden, you tell me, ‘Sorry, mate, it’s over.'” said Hearn.
It obviously a mistake for Hearn to assume anything about what would happen with the arbitration case that was hanging over Fury’s head. In hindsight, Hearn should have suspected that this case could go against Fury, which meant that he would need to give Wilder his contractual rematch.
Hearn says that Team Fury could have canceled the Wilder rematch last December, but they chose not to. If that’s the case, you have to suspect that this was a fight that they wanted all along.
Eddie now believes that Fury and his team used the Joshua negotiations as a way of getting clout to increase his popularity passively without needing to risk his neck by actually fighting AJ.
Fury happy at fighting Wilder
“I saw Tyson Fury on ESPN, happy as Larry that he’d got the Deontay Wilder fight, ‘I’m gonna do this, then I’m gonna fight Anthony Joshua, December.’ Who knows?… Right now, the feeling from our camp is – they have absolutely no interest in this fight,” said Hearn to iFL TV.
It did look mighty odd how happy Fury was last Saturday night when talking with ESPN about Wilder and Joshua. Fury didn’t look like a person that had just lost $80 million, which is what he would have received had he taken the fight with Joshua on August 14th.
Fury looked relieved that he was fighting Wilder again rather than facing Joshua, which would have been a whole different kettle of fish.