Hearn: Wilder isn’t worth a 60/40 purse split for Joshua fight

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid

Anthony Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn admitted today that the reason he’s not offering WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder a percentage deal for a fight against AJ is because he feels he doesn’t rate it. All he rates is a flat fee offer, according to Hearn. Wilder is not going to accept Hearn’s 88/12 purse split for the fight with Joshua. That’s not going to happen.

If this was a challenger fighting Joshua, then it’s understandable that he’s offering him potentially just 12.5 percent of the $100 million purse But Wilder is a world champion, not a challenger.

Hearn says Wilder doesn’t anywhere close to a 40 percent purse for the Joshua fight, because the only things he brings to the fight is his WBC title, and possibly some PPV buys in the States. Hearn is still banging on about how Wilder would be making 5 to 6 times his highest purse for the Joshua fight. Hearn isn’t happy that Joshua won’t make double his highest purse if he fights Wilder. What all this means is Wilder won’t get a percentage deal for the Joshua fight.

If he wants to fight him, he’s going to have to agree to a flat fee offer, which wouldn’t be bad if it was in the neighborhood of 40 million, but with Hearn only offering Wilder $12.5 million, it leaves open the chance that he could wind up receiving very little money in comparison to Joshua if the fight brings in $100 million or more. Hearn doesn’t know what the fight will bring in, and he seems to be making lowball offers based on his low

“It’s not close,” Hearn said to Fighthype about the negotiations between Joshua and Wilder. “We don’t feel we necessarily have to [give Wilder a percentage deal]. We are prepared to talk, but we feel Joshua holds absolutely all the aces. We’re offering him [Wilder] five to six times his highest purse ever. They can make us a flat fee offer. If you want to make it 5 to 6 times Anthony Joshua’s purse, lovely. If you want to make it two times Anthony Joshua’s purse, we’d probably consider it,” Hearn said.

The pay-per-view money that Joshua vs. Wilder makes in the UK would be nothing compared to the much bigger numbers that potentially could be made from the U.S PPV. The States is a much bigger country than the UK, and Wilder deserves a 60-40 split in case the fight does bring in a lot of PPVs. Wilder obviously isn’t a PPV fighter in the U.S, but neither is Joshua. He’s totally unknown to the casual boxing fans, and he’s not becoming more known because his fights are on odd hours and he never faces good opposition that the fans care about. I’m sorry, but Wladimir Klitschko was never a star in the U.S, and he was old at 41 and well past it by the time Hearn signed him up as an opponent for Joshua last year. Offering Wilder just a flat fee is not going to get Hearn the fight for Joshua.

Hearn can keep bellyaching about how Wilder is getting 5 to 6 times more money with the $12.5 million flat fee that he’s offered him, but the thing is the fight may bring in tremendous numbers. It could rake in $100 million. If it does, Wilder would be stuck with just the $12.5 million flat fee, whereas Joshua would walk away with 87.5 million. That’s not even fair. Hearn saying that Wilder doesn’t rate a percentage deal shows you the lack of respect that he has for his contribution to the fight. With a promoter like that, there’s no way on earth the Joshua-Wilder fight will ever take place with both of them as champions and still in their primes.

”The funny thing is Anthony Joshua probably won’t make anywhere near twice his highest purse to fight Deontay Wilder, but the other guy has been offered five to six times his highest purse,” Hearn said. ”We did that because Anthony Joshua is the complete draw in this fight. The only thing Wilder can help us is with U.S pay-per-view, which he is not and certainly Anthony Joshua is not, but collectively they [Joshua and Wilder] are. But there’s no model, there’s no numbers telling us what it’s going to do. It might do 100,000 buys. They were saying it would do 500,000 buys. Maybe, give us a guarantee, but not broadcaster is going to give you a guarantee on a pay-per-view,” Hearn said.

Hearn is wrong about Joshua being the complete draw. Wilder will likely bring in a lot more money. Maybe the same amount of fans will come see the fight as what Joshua has been bringing in for his recent fights, but they can raise the ticket prices to make a lot more money. Joshua is the more popular fighter, but he’s not the complete draw in this fight. The boxing fans will want to see the Joshua-Wilder fight because they’re not sure who will win. Wilder has the potential to knock Joshua out, and that in turn will interest a lot more boxing fans to see the live and on PPV.

Hearn sounds very, very greedy with the way he’s talking. I guess that kind of negotiating works with the other guys Joshua fights, but I don’t think it’s going to work with trying to put together a fight with Wilder. What’s troubling is Hearn is openly admitting that he doesn’t think Wilder deserves a percentage deal. Hearn is saying Wilder only deserves a flat fee. That means Hearn doesn’t feel that the higher PPV buys and ticket sales for the Joshua-Wilder fight are worth it to give Wilder a 40 percent split. Hearn can spin it anyway he wants to by blabbering about how Wilder is supposedly going to make 5 or 6 times his highest purse, but he’s still likely going to bring in many PPV buys than Joshua has ever brought in before. There’s a high degree of interest from the boxing world in the Joshua vs. Wilder fight. You’re not going to see the same type of interest in fights between Joshua and Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller, Alexander Povetkin, Tyson Fury, Kubrat Pulev and Dillian Whyte.

”What can Wilder add to the fight? Yes, he can add some increased pay-per-view buys,” Hearn said. ”We’re doing seven figures for pay-per-view every time he fights. So yes, he can make that bigger. U.S pay-per-view, you don’t really know. How many fans is Deontay Wilder going to bring from the U.S. Somewhere between one and ten. That’s the truth. How many people will fly over? If we did the fight in Vegas, we’d put out the Brits. What did he sell for the Barclays Center in his last fight? He sold 8,000, 9,000 for the Ortiz fight, which was a brilliant fight. We’re not dealing with a draw here. We’re dealing with a guy that holds a heavyweight belt, who needs respect and needs to be paid well. But let’s understand the facts and the reality. Anthony Joshua is the pure sell. At the same time, we’re not being arrogant. We’re saying, ‘Let’s talk,’”Hearn said.

Hearn doesn’t seem to believe that the Joshua-Wilder fight will bring in a lot of PPV buys in the U.S, which is why he’s only offering him a flat fee. But Wilder deserves the PPV upside in case the fight does bring in a lot of PPV buys. If Joshua is able to keep all the PPV and gate money to himself due to Wilder agreeing to the $12.5 million flat fee, then it’ll wind up being a rotten deal for him if the fight does bring in a huge amount of buys on the night.

Well, if Hearn doesn’t want Wilder to get any of the British PPV money, then he should give him the $12.5 million flat fee offer and allow him to keep all the U.S PPV money. In other words, both fighters keep their PPV buys from their respective countries, but Wilder gets a $12.5 million flat fee on top of that. Joshua would get all the gate money from wherever the fight is staged in the UK, as well as the UK PPV.

What Hearn can’t seem to understand is Joshua is the one that has the hang-up about wanting all the titles at heavyweight. If Hearn is going to offer Wilder a much lower amount of money then Joshua, then the fight won’t get made and he’ll never have the chance to win his WBC title. Hearn will have to explain to Joshua that he’s sorry but he can’t put the fight together because Wilder won’t agree to the small flat fee he’s offering him. If Joshua is fine with Hearn being unable to deliver the fight that he wants against Wilder, then there will be no problems. But it might be hard on Joshua to let go and forget about the WBC belt not in his possession.

”It’s very hard to go into negotiations when we’re told the fight with Breazeale is already done in July,” Hearn said. ”If he wants to talk about a split, I’ll put it to AJ, but he ain’t worth 60/40, nowhere near. I’m sorry, that’s the reality. Maybe Joshua will overpay in time, but I don’t think he should. This is the biggest fight of his career; maybe the biggest fight of his entire career forever,” Hearn said.

So, there it is. Hearn saying that Wilder doesn’t rate a 60/40 offer for the Joshua fight. That’s pretty bad. I don’t know what percentage Joshua and Hearn wants Wilder to accept, but they’re probably not going to get him to agree to a smaller purse. Maybe that will change after Wilder loses a couple of times, but if that happens, the interest in the fight will have evaporated by then.

”They can’t make Anthony Joshua an offer, because they don’t control the money,”Hearn said. ”We want to make the fight, but it might be a waste of time. But Joshua wants it next. That’s the thing. He’s instructed me. We made the offer together. He knows the offer. We felt like it was a good offer. He said to me, ‘If I was earning what Wilder’s earning and they made us that offer, I would sign within the hour.’ Those were his exact words to me,” Hearn said.

It sounds like Hearn already feels that the negotiations will be a waste of time. He’s going to meet with Wilder’s managers next week in New York, he says, and he’s hoping that talking to them face to face will help make the fight happen. I don’t think it will. If Hearn sticks with only offering Wilder flat fees for the Joshua fight, he’s not going to have any luck in getting him to agree to it unless the flat fee is an enormous offer. There’s no way Hearn will take the risk of offering Wilder a big flat fee.

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