Boxing is looking to make headlines and Deontay Wilder vs. Anthony Joshua could be boxings defining moment. Both fighters are undefeated and have a combined 59 wins by knockout.
Showtime’s president of sports programming Stephen Espinoza, spoke with TMZ Sports, saying he believes the Deontay Wilder vs. Anthony Joshua heavyweight bout will happen this year.
“There’s a lot of positioning,” he said of the negotiations for the fight. I think anytime you see guys talking to the press about a negotiation, generally that means there’s very little actual negotiating going on. But the ball is rolling. Things are moving. Discussions are happening. I think that, once we get past a certain hump, then I think it will happen very quickly. So I’m still optimistic we’ll get it this year.”
While Espinoza is optimistic Wilder seems to be the one willing to take on the challenge. Joshua, for the most part, hasn’t been too enthused as Wilder. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn, told Richard Damerell of Sky Sports he doesn’t want to shorten his training to get this fight done.
“I’m not letting Anthony Joshua fight this fight with an eight-week camp, because this is everything this fight. Everything that he’s built towards, his whole professional career, maybe his whole boxing career is built towards this moment. We’re not just going to go ‘oh yeah, let’s just dive in and do it on a date that doesn’t give us the best prep time.”
It doesn’t seem as if this fight will happen, but we don’t know for sure. Hearn added:
“I think more realistically, October, November is a solution, but that does rule out the place where we wanted to stage it, which is Wembley, so lots to try and resolve. But we want the fight, we’re prepared to sign for the fight now.”
Stay tuned for updates as the world is ready for these two to clash, whether this year or early in 2019.
Flip the page for video of more details of when you can expect everything to go down.