Anthony Joshua will be making his return to the ring next week (Sat. June 1, 2019).
Famed boxing promoter Eddie Hearn doesn’t expect WBC heavyweight champ Deontay Wilder to be in attendance for the affair. He believes such an appearance would put far too much pressure on the American heavyweight champ to make a fight happen with Joshua next, as he tells Metro UK:
“I think because Deontay knows he’s not going to fight Joshua, or he doesn’t want to fight Joshua, there’s going to be a lot of pressure on him,’ Hearn said.
“If he’s there, we’re going to put it on him, the media are going to put it on him and the fans are going to put it on him. And if he knows he’s fighting Ortiz, there probably isn’t a huge amount of point in him going to be honest. But I hope he goes. What can we do? We want the undisputed fight, we can’t make it any clearer.
“I don’t care about Deontay Wilder, we’ve got to care about Andy Ruiz. Next week, Britain takes over Madison Square Garden and America get to see Anthony Joshua live and up close. All I care about is Joshua-Ruiz. Once that’s dealt with, and touch wood AJ gets the win, we’ll move on and push as hard as we can for that fight [against Wilder].”
Joshua will be facing Andy Ruiz from Madison Square Garden on June 1. He will be putting his WBA (Super), IBF, WBO, and IBO heavyweight titles up for grabs. The Englishman is undefeated in the ring, with a record of 22-0, 21 of them coming by way of knockout. He’ll be facing Ruiz, a former heavyweight title challenger who has only lost one fight in his career – to Joseph Parker.
As for Wilder, he just obliterated Dominic Breazeale defending his WBC heavyweight title. It only took him just over two minutes to render Breazeale unconscious. The victory extended his undefeated record to 41-0-1, the tie on his record being against Tyson Fury.
Fans have been clamoring for a fight between Joshua and Wilder for years. Unfortunately, negotiations have proven to be unsuccessful thus far.
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