Deontay Wilder has ruled out a fight for the undisputed championship at heavyweight against Anthony Joshua in 2019.
Wilder said that he will be fighting Joshua (22-0, 21 KOs) in 2020.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn won’t like the news, of course, because he’s been banging the drum for the Joshua-Wilder contest to take place in November.
Hearn has been complaining recently that if the Wilder doesn’t place in 2019, Joshua will be stuck fighting mandatory challengers one after another in 2020.
It’s believed that Hearn has the ability to make the Joshua-Wilder fight in 2019 if he tells Team Wilder the words they want to hear:
‘We’ll give you the 50-50 purse split that you’re asking for.’ Since that’s not something that Hearn is likely to do, the unification between Wilder and Joshua will kicked down the road to 2020, and perhaps into 2021.
If Wilder beats Fury in the first quarter of 2020, he’s going to be in the position to not only demand the 50-50 split for the Joshua fight, but also expect to get it.
Wilder will have a busy year in 2020, because that’s when his rematch with Tyson Fury is supposed to take place in the first quarter of the year.
If Wilder beats Fury in February or March 2020, then the Joshua fight will likely be the next one that comes after.
With the amount of fan interest in the Wilder-Fury fight, it would be hard for them not to put together a trilogy fight right away.
The only thing that would stop that from happening is Fury’s co-promoters at Top Rank. They might decide to let the fight marinate once again, and have Fury fighting more guys along the same lines as Tom Schwarz.
The good news is Hearn says he’ll still want to make the Joshua-Wilder fight if one or both fighters lose in the near future. Hearn sees the fight as big enough still for it to happen regardless.
The only thing that will change is the purse split. Right now, Hearn is offering Wilder a 60-40 split. If Wilder loses his next fight against Dominic Breazeale on May 18, then Hearn can drop that split to somewhere along the lies of 70-30 or 75-25.
If Wilder (40-0-1, 39 KOs) unification fight doesn’t happen in November, Joshua will be under pressure from the International Boxing Federation to defend against his mandatory Kubrat Pulev.
That’s a fight that brings nothing to the table for Joshua, and Hearn has said that he could start vacating titles.