Boxing
Eddie Hearn believes that Tyson Fury vs. Deontay Wilder was never going to happen in July
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Eddie Hearn was never certain that Tyson Fury would defend his WBC heavyweight title against Deontay Wilder on July 24.
The Matchroom boss, currently working on Anthony Joshua’s mandatory defence against Oleksandr Usyk, made the admission when he was a special guest on The DAZN Boxing Show.
The bout, postponed due to a COVID-19 outbreak in Fury’s camp, was set to be the third meeting between Fury and Wilder.
The contest is now reported to be taking place in October, which means a fight between the winner and the victor of Joshua vs. Usyk will not take place until 2022. However, Hearn believes that the July date was always a non-starter.
“I just don't feel that a supposed megafight like that, and it's a big fight, just flicks the switch with seven or eight weeks to go and just says ‘this is the day we're going’,” said Hearn. “When you know the business, there's too many issues. So, there was no broadcaster in the UK announced. You know he has a contract with BT? They never announced the fight.
“They sold no tickets. Basically, you could you could go online and check. I don't know whether it was 25% or 30% of the tickets have been sold but that's disastrous. There was no hype. This was going to do very, very poor pay per view numbers.”
