By: Sean Crose
“I don’t know the ins and outs, the facts, what to believe,” Eddie Hearn says of the third Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder fight supposedly being pushed back. Still, he’s quick to tell iFL TV: “I’ve told you the fight wouldn’t happen.” Suffice to say Anthony Joshua’s promoter is a bit suspicious about what’s going down with Team Fury. “Whether it’s Covid related, whether its the fact they hadn’t sold any tickets, whether it’s the worry the pay per view was going to flop, whether it was Fury’s camp weren’t going great,” it’s clear Hearn’s thinks something may be up.
“I’m sure someone’s got Covid (in Fury’s camp),” Hearn admits, “but I think when you look at the manifest and the seating plan online, and you realize how few tickets they sold for the event, it does start stinking a little bit.” After trying to make a super fight between Joshua and Fury for what seems like forever, Hearn simply doesn’t feel the Fury camp is reliable. “It’s very difficult,” he says, “when you’ve had the kind of dealings that we had to just believe anything.”
As many fight fans know, Hearn was on the cusp of announcing a Joshua-Fury fight for August. The battle was to go down in Saudi Arabia, with the winner becoming the first undisputed heavyweight champion the world has seen in ages. An arbitrator in America, however, declared that Fury had to fight Wilder a third time by September. That put a quick end to the Joshua-Fury bout, and all of the work Hearn did leading up to it. So no, Hearn isn’t particularly keen on Fury’s handlers. Still, he wishes Fury well. “If he has got Covid,” he says, “I wish him all the best.”
Yet Hearn’s use of the word “if” here is telling. As is his attitude towards Fury-Wilder 3 as a whole.
“Clearly from the reaction of the fans and the ticket sales,” he says, “no one needs to see the fight.” This is up for debate of course. Although Fury thrashed Wilder in their 2020 battle, their wild 2018 draw did leave some feeling that a third bout, which had been signed to before Covid sent everything boxing into a whirlwhind of legal confusion, was in order. Now, with the division in chaos and Joshua looking to face former cruiserweight kingpin Oleksandr Usyk in September, Hearn will most likely just forge ahead, leaving Team Fury to its own devices, at least for the time being.