With Tyson Fury claiming doubts that his fight with Anthony Joshua will come off, due to Joshua and promoter Eddie Hearn seeking more money to do the fight in the United States instead of the United Kingdom, which is the wish of Turki Alalshikh and Sela.
Hearn spoke this afternoon on DAZN and didn’t entirely deny any of that, saying that the contract they’ve signed was for a fight in the United Kingdom, and that they’ve presented terms that would be acceptable for them to do the fight in the States.
“We’ve signed the contract. We’re waiting for a date. People keep talking, you saw Tyson Fury on the elliptical or whatever he does, shouting and screaming. There’s nothing to shout and scream about, the fight’s done, the fight’s signed, no one can pull out of the fight. You can’t just pull out of a contract. So we’re just waiting on the date,” Hearn said.
“Now we know everybody and his dog involved in the fight wants to do the fight in America. We don’t. And we’ve told Sela and the team, if you want to do it in America, these are the terms we can move forward with, but we’d rather not, please. So there’s the option, really.
“The contract’s signed. If they deliver on the contract, which they have to do legally, the fight’s happening in the UK, and we’ll be very, very happy. But there’s no suggestion that the fight’s not happening. No one can stop this fight from happening. The only way it can be stopped from happening is if they actually breach the contract. We have a contract to fight Tyson Fury in the UK and that’s what we expect to do.”
There is pretty obvious reason to have some doubts that this fight is going to happen. Hearn admits that nobody involved in actually putting on the event wants to do the fight in the UK, and he has said repeatedly that the deal signed by both sides said the fight would be in the UK. He admits that the organizers want to take it to the United States, confirming what has been said elsewhere repeatedly.
Fury says Hearn and Joshua are asking for more money to do that; Hearn doesn’t really deny such a claim by saying they’ve told Sela what terms they will accept to, we can guess, amend the contract. Your first guess would be they’d want more money, in some form or other, whether that’s a bigger purse for AJ or more money for other Matchroom Sport deals or whatever; Fury very specifically brought up the darts and snooker deals that Matchroom have done with Alalshikh.
Yes, he also stresses that they’ve agreed to fight and don’t plan on pulling out. Still, it’s not too far between the lines to see that Hearn and Joshua do not want to do the fight in the United States if they can help it. And if Sela were to acquiesce and restructure the Joshua side of the deal, why on earth would Fury not ask for something extra, too?
While Hearn says everyone is “getting their knickers in a twist” over nothing, it’s hard to not feel there’s something here, and that the deal is not solidly done as things currently stand, that the end result of this “terms” presentation from Matchroom isn’t going to just be, “Yes, so the fight is on,” or, “No, but the fight is still going to happen.”
It might not come down to “pulling out” of the fight or contract, so technically speaking, Hearn would not lying with what he’s saying. Think of it more as massaging the truth about potential realities — instead of “pulling out,” it could turn into breach of contract claims and a possible legal dispute, which would, obviously, likely prevent the fight from actually happening, which is all the boxing public is really talking about or even cares about, as fascinating as it is to instead ponder the bank accounts of the boxers instead.
