Eddie Hearn believes Anthony Joshua has grown tired of Tyson Fury’s conduct during negotiations for their proposed fight in December and insists he is not to blame for talks breaking down last week.
Matchroom and Queensbury have held extensive negotiations over a fight between Joshua and Fury to be held on December 3, but a deal now appears to be off the table after Fury last week told Joshua that he had not met his deadline to sign the contract.
Fury’s father, John, posted a video on Instagram on Monday evening in which he accused Hearn of being responsible for the fight collapsing and claimed that he had cost Joshua over £100 million by failing to get the deal over the line.
Meanwhile, Queensbury negotiator George Warren, son of Fury’s promoter Frank Warren, has claimed that ‘communication was lacking’ from Hearn and Matchroom.
But when asked about the accusations, Fury told iFL TV on Tuesday: ‘John Fury… imagine having a sensible conversation with John Fury, anyone can watch that video and think, ‘what on earth is he talking about?’
‘On one hand they’re criticising him [Joshua] for not taking step-aside money to take easy fights, on the other hand, that whole step-aside situation was dead because Tyson Fury refused to fight Oleksandr Usyk without a warm-up fight.
‘I don’t even know if he actually knows or if that’s what he believes, I don’t think he’s a liar, I just think he hasn’t really processed the information.
‘When you watch that on Instagram and watch Tyson on Instagram, understand these are the people we’re dealing with. It’s really not that straightforward.
‘On George Warren’s comments, some of what he said was true, I don’t think it’s a blame game. He said he didn’t hear back from Matchroom but we didn’t hear back from Queensbury. We were told the fight was dead if we didn’t sign on Thursday, we didn’t sign it and since then no one’s spoke to us.
‘To be honest, after what everything was said on Instagram, my instructions weren’t really to race back and pander to Tyson Fury, begging for the fight.
‘In the respect of there hasn’t really been any communication since the end of last week, that is true. He said we slowed down communication, no, your client [Fury] came out and told our client [Joshua] that the fight was 100% off and there was no way he was getting his opportunity.
‘As I said on Instagram this morning, digest the information, and ultimately if in doubt or you need to panic, blame Eddie, it’s a simple way out.
‘We are willing to speak about it but we are in a busy fight week [with Eubank Jr and Benn] at the same time. I don’t want to start getting into a back and forwards which could affect this fight getting made at some point.
‘Don’t forget, when we signed for the Fury fight a few months back there was no negotiations between Matchroom and Queensbury, it was all done by Saudi. In this situation where all of the talks have been between myself, Frank Smith and George Warren. And there’s good communication, what I don’t want to do is break that good start made by saying, ‘he did this, he did that’.
‘Ultimately, the fight couldn’t get made now, can it get made? Yes. 100%. Willing to talk about it at any time, but we were told categorically by Mr Fury that the fight was dead and there was no way he was taking the fight, so from AJ’s point of view, I don’t think he really wants to engage with him.
‘He [Joshua] accepted it was done with last Monday when Tyson Fury came out publicly and abused him and said the fight’s off. Then when he did it again on Thursday… how many times have you got to say it for the other bloke to go, ‘ah, do you know what, leave it?’. And then it’s like, ‘they never came crawling back after he said that’, no we didn’t sorry about that, but it’s alright because we cost AJ £110 million.’
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