Photo by: Naoki Fukuda

Promoter Eddie Hearn wants Anthony Joshua to unify the heavyweight titles and face Deontay Wilder immediately after his bout with Wladimir Klitschko on April 29 in London. However, Hearn wants Joshua-Klitschko to be on pay-per-view and in order for the fight to do well commercially, Hearn recommended those involved in Wilder’s career spend more time trying to expand his profile to make him a bigger attraction for the salability of the bout.

“We want to unify against Deontay Wilder,” Hearn told RingTV.com on Tuesday in Manhattan. “Joshua against Wilder is an incredible fight in the U.S. But I still feel they need to build Deontay more in the States and listen, we need to build Anthony in the States as well. But I want that fight to be a pay-per-view fight over here and a pay-per-view fight in the UK, and then we can go back to the purses in the olden days with the heavyweights.”

Hearn dismissed the idea that Joshua would take a tune-up bout in the U.S. after Klitschko to also expand his popularity stateside. While Joshua has yet to fight in the U.S., he is a star back home where his bout with Klitschko has already sold 85,000 tickets at Wembley Stadium. Wilder (37-0, 36 KOs) will face Gerald Washington on Feb. 25 next in his first fight since he had multiple surgeries to repair a torn biceps and shattered hand; the bout will take place at Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama, which seats more than 17,000. “They’ll be no small fights after this,” Hearn said of Joshua. “You can’t earn the kind of money he’s going to earn in this fight (with Klitschko) and then take 25% to fight someone else. We’ll go straight in. He fancies the Wilder fight.”

Struggling to locate a copy of RING magazine? Try here or…

SUBSCRIBE

You can subscribe to the print and digital editions of RING magazine by clicking the banner or here. You can also order the current issue, which is on newsstands, or back issues from our subscribe page. On the cover this month: THE RING 2016 Fighter of the Year, Carl Frampton.