Deontay Wilder’s manager Shelly Finke has admitted that he ignored promoter Eddie Hearn’s offer of a big fight against Anthony Joshua.
The American boxer, who recently traced his ancestry to Edo State in Nigeria, is scheduled to face Finland’s Robert Helenius in a heavyweight bout after turning down a deal to fight the Nigerian-born Briton.
Finkel confessed that he ignored promoter Hearn’s approach to organise a mouth-watering clash between Wilder and Joshua, instead choosing to focus on the Helenius bout which is scheduled for October 3.
Hearn had revealed to SecondsOut that he approached Wilder’s team to put together a fight agreement, but found out that Wilder was not interested.
“It’s come out a few times by Eddie Hearn that I avoided him. That’s partially true, well it’s wholly true,” Finkel told TalkSport.
“We have a fight coming up with Robert Helenius. Eddie emailed me, ‘Can we talk? I have some big [offer] for Deontay’.
“Right now we have the Helenius fight, that’s all we need to concentrate on. Because if something went wrong there, nothing else would be. And if it goes right, it’ll all get worked out.
“And I felt if I got on a call with Eddie, the next thing you would be on the call to me, ‘Oh, did you and Eddie talk?’ So I said to Deontay and Al Haymon, ‘What do you think?’ And they said, ‘Let’s just get this fight out of the way.’
“And sure enough, [Hearn says], ‘Shelly didn’t even talk to me.’ I think he also has this feeling that I dislike Eddie. No. I don’t always agree with him, we’re on opposite sides, he has a fighter who will hopefully be an opponent for one of my guys, in this case Deontay, and it’s nothing of the sort.
“Barry Hearn and I, we go back 30, 40 years and it’s always been very cordial. And the Eddie thing, look, he’s been around not as long as he thinks he has, but he’s done some really exciting good things, so I give him credit for that.
‘And when it comes time to make a deal, it’ll get done, or not. It got done with Wladimir Klitschko and now he seems to be on a path to fight Tyson Fury, I wish him well.”
While Wilder is due to fight Helenius, Joshua has agreed to battle World Boxing Council champion Fury in one of the most highly-anticipated bouts in the history of the heavyweight division.
Joshua, 32, lost for the second time to Oleksandr Usyk in August and is reportedly keen on setting up a meeting with Wilder.
Ukrainian Usyk, 35, holds the WBO, WBA and IBF belts he snatched from Joshua, and he had seemed close to a clash with Fury before scheduling issues scuppered a potential deal.
Finkel added: “The other day we got a message that Usyk will fight us (Wilder) if Joshua goes the route of Fury, yeah, we’re open to that, we’re not opposed to that at all.
“And if not, there’s Andy Ruiz Jr, there’s several other options. In my mind, until the Fury [vs Joshua] thing came, I was thinking that after the fight with Helenius we would be talking, Eddie and I, but things happen.”
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