English boxing promoter Eddie Hearn said that the IBF, WBO, and WBA “Super” world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (22-0-0) is facing a “logjam” of mandatories and he didn’t rule out the possibility of the Brit vacating one of his belts in order to get the unification fight with the WBC king – Deontay Wilder (40-0-1).
The 29-year-old’s next fight will be against Jarrell Miller (23-0-1) on June 1 in New York, even though “Big Baby” wasn’t in a mandatory position.
“We don’t want to vacate one of the titles because we want the undisputed fight,’ Hearn told iFL TV. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, if a title was vacated, we’d still fight Wilder – but it wouldn’t be the undisputed fight. That’s the golden chalice. So that’s why we want it to happen in November, December.”
“Joshua is going to have a logjam of mandatories. So after Miller, he’s either going to fight Wilder or another fight or, more likely, Oleksandr Usyk (16-0-0).”
‘If he fights the undisputed fight then he’s got to fight Usyk after. Then he’s got to fight Kubrat Pulev (27-1-0) as another mandatory after that. And then he’s got to fight the WBA one. ‘So that’s when you get into the realms of, are we vacating a belt here? Wladimir Klitschko never vacated a belt, but he got criticized because of the mandatories that were put in front of him – was it Tony Thompson he fought twice,” Hearn added.
Meantime, Usyk will make his heavyweight debut most likely against the French Carlos Takam (36-5-1) who replaced Bulgaria’s Pulev back in October 2017 and fought Anthony Joshua in Cardiff.
