Deontay Wilder has ruled out the idea of working with Eddie Hearn, as his manager Shelly Finkel is doubtful that a bout between Anthony Joshua will take place in the near future.
In 2018, Joshua and Wilder were both in contention to win all four of the recognized world championship titles: WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO.
However, both of them have been dethroned in their respective losses to Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury, so neither of them currently holds any belts.
There were hopes that the lack of a high-stakes situation may make it easier to finalize an arrangement between the two fighters.
Wilder recently announced that he is a free agent and is willing to cooperate with anyone, as Hearn revealed that discussions about a possible collaboration are taking place.
When ProBoxingFans inquired as to whether there was any accuracy in the idea that he might put pen to paper with Hearn, Wilder responded with the following: “That’s negative.”
The longstanding disagreement between the two sides is not surprising. During its peak, Hearn was engaged in a very public exchange of insults with Wilder and Finkel, which ultimately prevented them from reaching an agreement.
At the end of last year, Hearn and Finkel started communicating with each other again in an effort to mend their relationship. Nevertheless, Finkel remains doubtful that the Joshua vs Wilder match will ever take place.
In his comments to TalkSPORT, he said: “We have looked for years for it. And I think the public knows that when they said, ‘We want $50million,’ and we said, ‘You got it,’ the fight didn’t happen. Eddie said to me, ‘Do this and it’ll happen,’ just recently.
“He said the next fight will be Joshua, then he said Joshua has a new trainer and the new trainer wants him to take a warm-up. Then they said, ‘Well maybe not Deontay, maybe Dillian Whyte.’ I can’t wait for him, we’ve just gotta go with our career.”