Matchroom Boxing‘s Eddie Hearn has spoken out about the recent developments surrounding a potential Tyson Fury vs Anthony Joshua showdown in an interview with Behind the Gloves.
Hearn, who promotes Joshua, spoke out for the first time on Thursday since Fury declared that the fight was now off the table at the beginning of the week, describing the whole situation as ‘baffling’.
“I don’t want to get involved with back-and-forths that are going to negatively affect this fight being made, but to be honest we are quite baffled by the situation. Firstly, when we agreed terms for the fight it took over a week for us to receive a contract back from Queensberry.
“When we received that contract it was all over the place. It was nowhere near being any kind of situation that we could be close to signing. We have not had that contract for fourteen days like he [Fury] said. Over the next week we have all worked tirelessly and had a number of meetings with Queensberry to get the contract in some kind of decent shape.
“Last Monday we sent our final draft to Queensberry only to see that Tyson Fury had publicly pulled out of the fight and it was no longer on the table. Yesterday we then received comments back from Queensberry on our final draft of the agreement, which is now being reviewed.“
Hearn again appeared to hint Fury’s genuine intention to make the fight and later revealed in the interview that Dereck Chisora received an offer from Team Fury for a fight on December 3rd in recent days. “I’m not sure why Tyson Fury keeps setting unrealistic deadlines whilst also offering the fight to a number of other heavyweights for the selected date. If he is serious about the fight being made, I suggest he allows Matchroom and Queensberry to keep working hard to make the fight, which everyone has been trying to do.
“You can’t keep pulling out of a fight and then restarting negotiations when there has been so many positive conservations already had. We will see what happens from here.”
Hearn also maintained that it wasn’t just issues surrounding the broadcasting side of the negotiations holding the fight up. “There’s a number of comments from our final draft, which we didn’t feel were unreasonable, but again I’m not saying that Queensberry have to sign that contract. We’re getting there. We’ve sent our final comments, they’ve just sent theirs back. We’re going to review it, but it doesn’t really work when someone comes out in the morning and says ‘sign it today’. And by the way, Queensberry aren’t asking us to [sign it today]. They understand the process and are happy to keep working through it.
“I’m not saying it’s a bad deal but there’s a process that we have to go through to make the biggest fight in boxing. You can’t call a deadline on Monday, we send the final comments back, then you pull out the fight and then two days later say ‘I’m back in the fight, sign it today’. Everything he says he doesn’t stand by. I don’t want to focus on what Tyson Fury’s saying, I’m focusing on what Queensberry are saying.
When questioned on if he shares the optimism of Fury’s promoter Frank Warren, who stated he was very confident that the fight can be made for December, Hearn admitted he was pessimistic about the situation. “Not really, because I don’t know what to believe. You can’t come out and say the fight is off the table, you’re a pussy, blah blah blah. It becomes tedious to people. Part of me wonders why he’s doing it, especially when they’re offering Chisora the fight.“
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