Eddie Hearn appears to have laughed off claims that Anthony Joshua will earn £30million for a heavyweight tournament.
Joshua recently defeated Jermaine Franklin in his comeback fight, and is now currently in negotiations over a potential Saudi Arabia. mega-fight against Deontay Wilder in December. Any showdown will form a likely part of a four-man heavyweight tournament, with the Middle East also reportedly in talks with Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk over staging their undisputed title fight.
Radio host Simon Jordan this week claimed that purses for the event saw Joshua and Wilder set to pocket £30million. He said on talkBOXING: “You start hearing about the distribution deals and how you would buy Anthony Joshua out of DAZN. Or how you would do a dual-broadcast deal.”
“Or how maybe the Saudis would cut it. What I’ve been hearing in the loosest of terms is the cut. £200million – £90million to Fury, £50million to Usyk and £30million each for Joshua and Wilder. That was an interesting piece of understanding that I got from that because I was thinking to myself, ‘Does Joshua accept £30million?’”
But AJ's promoter Hearn has appeared to have quickly laughed off the report responding with a laughing emoji after the reported purses were placed online. Joshua and Wilder would likely command a sizeable fee to step in the ring against one another given their huge profiles both in the US and the UK.
Joshua however has lost twice to Usyk since the pair last negotiated a showdown, while Wilder has been beaten twice by Fury. The British heavyweight was previously offered a $50m guaranteed by Wilder's team for the showdown so it appears unlikely the £30m would be the only money at stake.
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Hearn himself previously suggested the tournament could be worth around £300m given the fighters' purses and potential revenue it could generate. And in a positive update, he revealed Joshua and Wilder are both committed to making the fight happen.
"They want to make that night, they want to do Joshua vs Wilder and Fury vs Usyk,’ Hearn told Matchroom Boxing. "I think Usyk conversations, the Wilder conversations have gone very well. For us, we are in. We need to finalise terms but we said to Prince Khalid [bin Salman Al Saud] that is the fight we want. We know having worked with them before we can get a deal done.
"And really, what we are looking to do this week and next, is look at that situation and decide if there will be a fight in early August for Anthony Joshua before then. We just made it clear to them, our message was AJ is ready for all those fights, he is happy to agree the Deontay Wilder fight for December and we will now see if we can close terms in the next couple of weeks."
