Hearn gives Wilder $12.5M take-it-or-leave-it offer for Joshua fight

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid

It doesn’t look like the fans are going to be seeing a unification fight between WBC heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua and WBC champion Deontay Wilder in 2018. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn has given Wilder’s manager Al Haymon a $12.5 million take it or leave it offer for a fight, and if they don’t accept it, then they’ll move on to face AJ’s WBA mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin in their next fight, and then after that Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller.

The revenue generated for the Joshua-Wilder fight could be as high as $80 million from pay-per-view, gate and other revenue streams. As such, if Wilder accepts the $12.5 flat fee without sharing the loot from the gate, PPV and other sources of green stuff, then Joshua could walk away potentially with $67.5 million in comparison to Deontay’s much smaller purse for the fight.

Hearn says that he would try and restart negotiations with Wilder in 2019 at some point. You would have to assume that Hearn will make a similar offer at that time, which would let Wilder know that he’s going to keep putting him off for a year at a time until he finally agrees to the 20 percent purse offer for the fight. The thing is, WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker was offered a 33 percent purse split for the Joshua fight last March. For some reason, Hearn is offering Wilder less at 20 percent. Is it because Hearn believes Deontay brings less to the table financially than Wilder or

“If they don’t want it, we’ll fight our mandatory,” Hearn said via RingTV.com. “If they don’t accept it…we’re going to fight Alexander Povetkin next, and we’ll talk again in December, or February or March of next year.’’

So, there it is. Hearn has given Deontay a take it or leave it offer that he either accepts now or he’s put on the boiler and possibly has to wait until next year in 2019 before the negotiations are restarted by AJ’s side. I’d like to think that when/if Hearn restarts the negotiations that he’ll increase the offer made to Wilder to the 40 percent that his management wants for him to receive for the fight. Offering half of that a 20 percent shows you how far away Hearn is from what they’re looking for.

From Gilfoid’s perspective, Hearn’s offer is basically a way for him to say that he’s not interested in making the Joshua-Wilder fight at this time. By putting it in dollars rather than percentages, it makes Hearn and Joshua look better in the eyes of the boxing public, because $12.5 million sounds like a lot of money. But if Hearn were to say, ‘We’re offering Deontay an 80-20 purse split in OUR favor,’ then the fans would of course big highly upset about that.

A mandatory challenger gets 25 percent. Wilder isn’t even getting that. The offer was so low by Hearn that he’s indirectly telling Deontay and his team that he’s not interested in making the Joshua-Wilder fight. With the pressure on Hearn and Joshua to try and make the fight with Deontay, they had to make some kind of offer if they didn’t want the boxing public to see them as ducking the fight.

Obviously, it’s clear that’s what they’re doing. It’s kind of surprising that Joshua isn’t speaking up and telling Hearn to make Wilder a respectable offer, but he might not fancy the fight. If you’re not speaking up when your promoter is giving a popular fighter a take it leave it offer, then you have to assume that you’re fine with him negotiating in that manner. What Hearn is doing ISN’T negotiating though. It’s an authoritarian approach to negotiation in which you throw out a small offer to another fighter and let them know if they don’t agree with the money, then you’re moving on. That’s not negotiating in a true sense. It’s a power play move by Hearn, letting Team Wilder know that there isn’t going to be negotiations taking place. This move by Hearn could backfire on him if one of the two fighters winds up losing before they face each other in 2019 or 2020. If Joshua or Wilder gets beaten in their next two fights, then Hearn is going to wind up with a fight that will generate for less money.

Hearn is betting right now that Joshua and Wilder will win their next two fights, which will make their eventual unification contest much bigger next year. It’s likely that Hearn’s next move will be for him to once again start pushing Wilder to fight his Matchroom Boxing stable fighter Dillian Whyte in his next fight. Whyte is seen by a lot of boxing fans as Joshua’a bodyguard. Guys that are expected to fight Joshua in the near future are offered the Whyte fight by Hearn. Hearn isn’t even subtle about offering them the Whyte fight. He makes it known that he really wants them to fight Whyte, as if it’s necessary in some way for them to take that fight in order to get the Joshua fight. This in turn puts Wilder in a one down position in which he’s viewed as below Joshua if he were to accept the fight with Whyte. Wilder is a world champion, not a challenger trying to climb the rankings to EARN a fight against AJ. Moreover, Wilder holds what many boxing fans view as the most prestigious of the heavyweight titles with his WBC strap.

”It was a take it or leave it offer,” Wilder’s manager Shelly Finkel said to The Telegraph about the offer by Hearn to Deontay for the unification fight against Joshua. ”We will respond appropriately in the next day or so with our counter offer. If Joshua is serious, we will take the fight.”

There is a rematch clause in the contract in case Joshua loses. There would then be a second fight. It’s unclear what happens if Joshua beats Wilder. You would have to assume that Joshua would then move on and not give Wilder a rematch. The bad thing about that is Hearn wants the Joshua-Wilder fight to take place in the UK at Wembley Stadium in London or in Cardiff, Wales. If Wilder loses a controversial decision, then Joshua could still walk away and tell him ‘tough luck. You had your chance and you lost,’ and Wilder wouldn’t be able to force a second fight due to the rematch clause likely going in Joshua’s favor only.

Well, it’s academic at this point that Joshua and Wilder won’t be fighting in 2018 unless Hearn comes to his senses as increases the offer by double by bumping it up to 40 percent. I’m not sure if even 40 percent will be enough though. Wilder brings a lot to the table for the Joshua fight. Wilder might be undervaluing himself if he were to agree to a 40% cut of the revenue. He might be able to bring that up to 43% or even 45%. I think the fairest deal would be a 55-45 cut in favor of Joshua. Personally, I think Wilder deserves a 12% better cut of the revenue than the 33% cut that Joseph Parker received for his March 31 unification fight against Joshua at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. 45 percent is a good cut for Wilder. It’s well below the 50 percent split that Wilder originally asked for, but it’s still above the 33 percent that Parker got.

Joshua won a lackluster 12 round unanimous decision against Parker last month on March 31 in a unification fight in Cardiff, Wales. Joshua fought a cautious manner throughout, staying on th outside, jabbing and retreating each time Parker would go after him to land his hard shots. The fight was marred by the referee, who intervened frequently when Parker was fighting on the inside. The referee would step in and break the two fighters apart and bring them back to the center of the ring. This move by the referee worked in Joshua’s favor, because he had a huge 6 inch reach advantage over Parker and he was more than happy to keep the fight on the outside.

Wilder recently defeated what many boxing fans see as the third best heavyweight in the division in Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz by a 10h round knockout on March 3 in an incredibly exciting fight from start to finish in New York. Wilder was hurt in the 7th round, and he barely made it out of the round. Two rounds later, Wilder came back to hurt Ortiz at the end of the 9th with a big right hand shot that had him out on his feet. In the 10th, Wilder finished off Ortiz with two knockdowns. There was much drama in that fight.

You can’t compare Joshua’s safety first fight with Parker to Wilder’s win over Ortiz, because the two fights were so different. We don’t even know if Joshua would have won the Parker fight without the referee pulling the New Zealand fighter off of him each time he was landing heavy shots on the inside. You can argue the referee play a huge role in Joshua winning. When you have a referee that takes away your opponents main offensive path to winning a fight, then they’ve basically neutralized your opponent. If a referee had prevented Joshua from fighting on the outside against Parker, he would have been at a handicap if he could only fight him on the inside for the 12 rounds. I don’t think Joshua would have beaten Parker if he could only fight him in close, because he wasn’t as effective. It’s the same thing. The referee took away Parker’s ability to fight on the inside by pulling him off of Joshua when he was fighting at close range. This forced Parker to fight on the outside. With the referee keeping him from fighting on the inside, Parker never had a chance of winning the fight. It was truly sad. It’s as if the fight never happened, because Parker was handicapped offensively the entire fight.

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