The Oleksandr Usyk-Anthony Joshua rematch looks set to take place outdoors in London in April, according to Eddie Hearn, with a new trainer likely to be in Joshua’s corner.
Usyk took the WBA, WBO, IBO and IBF heavyweight titles from Joshua at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in September and when Joshua quickly indicated that he would exercise his rematch clause in the fight contract, it was suggested that fight could take place as early as February.
But with Joshua still on holiday in Dubai and having been trying out new trainers, Hearn says April is now the likely date.
“I think April is realistic for that fight,” Hearn said. “Before you know it, it’s going to be February and these fights take a lot of organizing. For us the preferred date and venue for that fight will be the UK, in which case we would have to do the fight outside, so we’re not really interested in doing that fight in March.
“AJ has been training relatively solidly since the fight. Realistically if you start your training camp in February, even April becomes quite tight but that is the preferred date for the fight and I think that’s realistic.”
Joshua had been quoted last month suggesting he might consider a step-aside deal to allow Usyk to face Tyson Fury, but Hearn insists that talks about such a deal never progressed, with Dillian Whyte having been installed as Fury’s mandatory challenger and the possibilities of Joshua stepping aside in the expectation of facing the winner with no guarantee of that fight ever coming about.
“Conversations about the whole step-aside maneuvering keep popping up every now and again because of the desire to stage an undisputed fight at some point, but with the Dillian Whyte situation those conversations become very difficult, because you have another pawn in the negotiations,” Hearn said.
“We got to the stage where it was almost like, let’s crack on with the original plan and that’s where we’re at. We’ve had two or three offers from different countries to stage Joshua v Usyk but for me after the success of the Spurs fight, other than the result, I would love to do that fight back in the UK, possibly at Spurs again or at Wembley, because I feel like it’s a must-win for AJ.
“If we had the opportunity to stage the fight in the UK we should do it, and if he can win that fight it would be pretty special.”
Hearn said that the first time he mentioned the possibility of a step-aside deal, he did not know how Joshua would react.
“I was a bit scared to have the conversation with him,” Hearn said. “When I first mentioned it, he looked like he was going to kill me. Then I went back there again and he said, ‘listen, if you feel there’s something you should propose to me, but I’m telling you I don’t want to step aside, it would have to be something you feel was too big an opportunity to turn down’ – and we never really got to that stage.
“We got to the stage where the mechanics of the procedure didn’t make sense. I never formally went to him and sat down and said this is how it’s going to work. Once you step aside it’s not about the money. Of course, that comes into it, but it’s more about the plan. To say OK, ‘if I’m working with a new trainer and have an interim fight then fight the winner of Fury-Usyk that could actually make sense from a development point of view’.
“But I don’t want to lose the opportunity of challenging for the world title and get messed around. You’re getting to a point where you’re running out of time to put on a fight of that magnitude, and make sure contractually all the other people are satisfied, and they get what they want. In the end time ran out and we just said ‘let’s do what we’ve got to do’.”
By: Ron Lewis