Heavyweight maestro Anthony Joshua (27-3, 24 KOs) is fresh off a sensational performance against Swedish boxer Otto Wallin (26-2-1, 14 KOs). Meanwhile, fans have long anticipated a showdown between Joshua and the ‘Bronze Bomber’ Deontay Wilder (43-3-1, 42 KOs). But, with no sign of the fight happening, Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, has been eyeing Francis Ngannou (17-3, 12 KOs) as a potential opponent for AJ and he believes that it will be a record-breaking event.
Hearn was recently in an interview with iFL TV. In conversation, he mentioned that the team is currently in talks for three potential fights, none of which involve Wilder. He revealed that their main goal is to focus on fighting the winner of Tyson Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) vs Oleksandr Usyk (21-0, 14 KOs).
Moreover, Hearn said that they are also in talks for a fight against Croatian boxer Filip Hrgovic (17-0, 14 KOs). Hrgovic’s recent first-round TKO against Mark de Mori (41-3-2, 36 KOs) in Riyadh certainly seems to have caught Hearn’s attention.
“There’s a Francis Ngannou fight out there, which would be absolutely colossal. There’s other heavyweights as well. The [Zhilei] Zhang fight possibly as well with Queensbury,” he said. “[Joseph] Parker, yeah, possibly. It’s difficult. We fought Parker, beat him, unified against him.” Wilder’s recent loss against Joseph Parker (34-3, 23 KOs) seems to have caused a significant blow to the potential fight discussions with AJ.
Joshua vs Wilder might be ‘dead’
Hearn strongly believes that the hype around Joshua vs Wilder has suffered massively after his recent loss.
“The fight’s dead for right now. You never know what’s going to happen in the future, but we both signed contracts to announce the fight that night, obviously subject to everybody winning. So, when Wilder lost, it was like, what the f*ck?”he said. “We had to go into the change room with Josh, and he was like, ‘He just lost?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. Look, don’t worry about that, you do your thing,’ and he did his thing outstandingly, and the fight is dead for now.”
The Matchroom CEO, however, added that the fight is possible in the future but at the moment, he wishes to pave the perfect path for AJ, who is a “hot commodity.”
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