Hearn to negotiate Joshua-Wilder in NY next week

Hearn says he’ll be meeting with Wilder’s team in person next week to see if a deal can be struck.

Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn is set to fly into New York next weekend as part of Daniel Jacobs fight against Maciej Sulecki. And while he’s in town he believes it’s an opportune moment to set up a face-to-face meeting with Deontay Wilder’s team about an undisputed heavyweight title unification fight with Anthony Joshua.

Hearn says a Wilder fight is the top priority for Joshua at the moment and while Wilder has turned down a flat offer of $12.5M to face Joshua, he hasn’t yet received a counter offer.

“We made an offer last week. We haven’t heard from them yet,” Hearn told Sky Sports News. “There’s been a bit of talking behind the scenes.

“I’m going to look to meet up with them in New York, get face to face with them, look into the whites of their eyes, and just see if we can make a deal. We’ve made an offer that we feel is substantial, if not we’re happy to talk about the numbers and look at their ideas as well.”

There’s a lot of big numbers being thrown around about the potential revenue for a potential Joshua-Wilder fight — with $100M being frequently cited — but it remains to be seen if that’s really an accurate projection. Joshua-Wilder is a big fight to make, but I’m not completely certain it’s that big.

Then again, having an undisputed heavyweight champion for the first time in about 20 years is a pretty big deal, and an easy promotional selling point, so that alone could reel-in a casual audience to a high degree.