Eddie Hearn is reportedly going to be offering WBC heavyweight champion Deontay ‘Bronze Bomber’ Wilder $7 million to $8 million to defend against his fighter Dillian Whyte next, according to Michael Benson. Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) previously turned down a $4 million offer to fight Whyte, as he wanted $7 million.
Hearn now appears to be willing to give Wilder his asking price of $7 million to take the fight against Whyte in the UK. However, it’s unclear whether Wilder now wants more than $7 million, because it’s been many months since he asked for that price for the Whyte fight. Wilder wants Joshua, not Whyte. As such, Wilder might not agree to the Whye fight no matter how much money Hearn offers him to take it. Hearn can obviously score points in the media by trashing Wilder and saying that he turned down an $8 million offer to face Whyte, but he’d be foolish to do that. It would weaken the April 13 Joshua-Wilder fight if Hearn starts spouting off about how Wilder turned down an $8 million offer to face Whyte.
Whyte isn’t going to be too pleased if Wilder receives $7 million to $8 million to fight him, because h likely won’t receive anything close to that amount. If Whyte starts talking about wanting a 50-50 deal for a fight against Wilder, then that fight will never get made. Whyte isn’t a world champion, so he shouldn’t receive a 50-50 deal.
Hearn likely isn’t too worried about Wilder potentially losing to Whyte and putting the huge money fight against Joshua in jeopardy, because he might not want that fight to take place in the first place. Whyte could remove a very big thorn in Joshua’s side by getting Wilder out of the picture.
The Wilder-Whyte winner will help make the fight against Joshua much bigger next year on April 13 at Wembley Stadium in London, England. Whyte’s performance in beating former WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker last Saturday wasn’t impressive enough to make him a viable opponent for Joshua to fight on April 13. Hearn obviously knows it would be a huge mistake if he announced to the British boxing fans that Joshua will be fighting Whyte on April 13, because Whyte looked so horrible against Parker. Whyte was knocked down in the 12th round by Parker, and he finished poorly in the last quarter of the contest. Parker looked like the winner of the fight based on rounds won. Whyte was given a huge break by the referee Ian John Lewis, who failed to control his constant fouling and he also blew a call on the 2nd round knockdown, which was caused by a head-butt.
The $7 million offer from Hearn might help his DAZN deal in bringing in badly needed subscriptions from U.S boxing fans. As it is right now, the American fighters that Hearn has signed aren’t big enough names to get U.S fans to subscribe to DAZN. Hearn supposedly has $1 billion to work with in signing different fighters. This would be a good time for him to start using that money by offering Wilder whatever his asking price is to face Whyte. It would be an interesting fight. I don’t think it would go well for Whyte, as he looked bad in getting dropped by Joseph Parker in the 12th round last Saturday night. Parker isn’t considered a big puncher, and yet he was able to put Whyte down. It’s just lucky for Whyte that there wasn’t another minute left in the 12th round because he would have likely been knocked out.
”I’d like to see Chisora fight Wilder,” Hearn said to IFL TV. ”Why not? because Wilder doesn’t want to fight Dillian Whyte because he’s scared to lose to Dillian Whyte. I’m not saying he’s a coward or anything like that. Maybe he thinks he beats Chisora easy. Yes,” Hearn said when asked if he’s going to make an offer for Wilder to fight Chisora. ”What I’ll do is lay it out this week. ‘You can fight an interim. There’s a lot of money if you fight Whyte, and we’ll do it in America as well.’ Wilder needs a fight. I’m not being conniving or slippery. He needs to fight someone or he can just have a voluntary. I’ll give him mad money for that as well. If I’m overpaying you and you can be on nights like this,” Hearn said about him wanting to get Wilder to fight Chisora or Whyte.
Chisora stopped Carlos Takam in the 8th round last Saturday night on the Dillian Whyte vs. Joseph Parker card. Chisora would be a good option for Wilder to take if Hearn is willing to come up with Deontay’s asking price for the fight.
Hearn can’t force Wilder to defend against Whyte. Hearn can only try and lure the 6’7” Deontay to accept the fight with the 30-year-old Whyte by offering him mad money that he can’t possibly turn down.
What’s unclear is what Hearn’s true motives are for his huge push to try and get Wilder to fight Whyte. While you can argue that Hearn is only trying to make the Wilder-Whyte fight in order to setup the winner of that contest against Joshua on April 13, it’s also quite possible that he’s hoping that Whyte will remove Wilder from the equation for AJ. While Hearn has said in the past that Joshua easily beats Wilder, that may not the reality of the situation. Wilder is a very dangerous opponent for Joshua due to his size, speed and one-punch power. It’s true that the 240+ pound Joshua outweighs the 210-lb Wilder by 30 pounds or more, but the leverage and raw power of the Alabama native makes him a huge risk for AJ. Joshua has never been hit by anyone with the kind of punching power that Wilder has going for him. If Wilder touches Joshua just once with one of his big right hands, he could stop him like Mihai Nistor did in the European Championships in 2011. Nistor bounced a left hand off the chin of Joshua that had him staggering around the ring. The referee was forced to step in and halt the fight in order to save Joshua from getting seriously hurt.
”If Wilder doesn’t want to fight AJ, then he fights AJ in April,” Hearn said about Whyte. ”We’re going to try and make the Wilder fight right now. He’ll [Wilder] fight AJ inevitably because that’s just going to happen eventually. But maybe we’ll do Whyte-Chisora 2. Maybe we’ll do Whyte-Miller. November or December,” Hearn said when asked about Whyte’s next fight.
I think it’s pretty clear that Whyte is going to be Joshua’s opponent on April 13. Everything points to Whyte being the one that will be sharing the ring with AJ.
”Maybe we’ll take him to the States,” Hearn said about Whyte’s next fight. ”It depends on what types of fights are available for him. If he’s having a tick over fighting waiting for the spring [April 13], then it might be in the States,” Hearn said about Whyte.
Hearn can match Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller with Whyte in November or December in the U.S. That might help drive some interest in his DAZN subscription service. I doubt that Hearn will do that because if he makes that fight, he would be removing one of the potential opponents that he can stick in with Joshua in near future. Hearn CAN match Miller against Whyte in his next fight, but he probably won’t even consider doing it. If Miller erases Whyte, it will force Hearn to have Dillian go through another long rebuilding process. It’s taken Whyte three years to rebuild from his 2015 loss to Joshua. Hearn won’t want to have Whyte taken out of the picture until 2021, because that would be a long time, and he may age a lot in that time frame.
If Hearn is going to have Whyte fight on DAZN in the States in November or December, then he’ll need to pick out an American fighter that the casual boxing fans can recognize otherwise the fight won’t attract any fans to subscribe to the streaming service to see the fight. Whyte is such an unknown to the casual fans that it won’t even register a blip on the radar screen if Hearn sticks him on DAZN in a fight in the U.S. The only way that the American boxing fans will care about seeing Whyte is if Hearn opens up his piggy bank and gives Wilder $8 million to take the fight Whyte. Hearn can’t stick Whyte in with just any run of the mill American heavyweight and expect the boxing fans to purse the fight on DAZN.