Wilder: Hearn Is Holding AJ Back From Unifying

Deontay Wilder feels Anthony Joshua wants a fight to unify the heavyweight division, but the WBC world heavyweight champion doesn’t feel Joshua’s promoter feels the same way.

“I’m hearing a lot of things, but I do have people behind scenes and they say Joshua want it,” Wilder told Boomer Esiason and Greg Giannotti on WFAN in New York.

“They say he wants it. No matter, you know, his feelings of fear or whatever, he wants to make the fight happen because the pressure is on him. When you’re the fighter, most of the pressure is on you. Like I said, you can be the promoter, you can be the manager and stuff, but you don’t never have to enter the ring not a day in your life. But as a fighter, we don’t want that negative energy that’s like we’re the one that’s holding it up or we don’t want the fights.”

Wilder and his team are still in contact with DAZN over a potential two-fight series with Joshua, that would see one fight in the United Kingdom and one fight in the United States. And while nothing can really be made until Joshua fights Andy Ruiz Jr. on June 1st, Wilder thinks that Eddie Hearn is the one pulling the break on the highly anticipated showdown.

“Like Lennox and Bowe – we seen him physically throw the [WBC] belt in the garbage can,” Wilder said. “His promoter, his manager did do that for him, so that already indicated that he didn’t want that fight. And he gotta deal with that for the rest of his life. In this situation, it’s at a point in time where I say we was gonna smoke him out. And boy, are we doing that. And now Joshua, there’s pressure on him. He wants the fight to happen, but the thing is he signed with Matchroom, which, you know, Eddie Hearn and the people that got him to this point. So, he can only do so much.

“He’s only limited to what he can say and what he can do. We thought that he read everything, being that he’s the talent and that’s what people come to see. They come to him when they come to his country. They’re not talking about anybody else. They’re talking about him, as they should. But we found out once he got into negotiations he don’t have all the say-so. So, not only does he has to want it, but they have to want it as well.”