Yeh I saw the interview. Well their hand is going to be forced one way or the other in the near future, and by vacating there's no way Santa Cruz or Valdez will entertain sharing 12 rounds with Josh. Also, Warrington vs Galahad in Leeds would be a solid (non PPV) Saturday night fight. You'd think BT would need as many slots filling as they can.
I laughed out loud this afternoon watching Warren's latest IFL interview. He asked Kugan who's topping his 'fighter of the year' poll, knowing full well the answer he was going to receive. The cheeky smile on the old dog's face when Kugan replied "Fury and Warrington" was hilarious. I don't know about deluded. Fact is all promoters talk rubbish, creating a positive narrative for their fighters. Eddie Hearn is the biggest rubbish talker of them all. He's also the biggest money earner of them all, so there's clearly method to the madness. I don't mind promoters bigging up their fighters, that's their job at the end of the day. It's when they put boxers down I get annoyed. That's just cheap. He's a snake like the rest of them but I can't help but admire Warren for his latest comeback. He's the immovable object and in my opinion, he does have the current two best active British fighters in Fury and Warrington. I also believe Saunders to be possibly better than those two when at the top of his game. Frank has a good year ahead if he can get Tyson/Wilder 2, Warrington/LSC and Billy Joe in a world title fight at some stage.
Hearn may talk rubbish, (for some I imagine this reads as 'I may talk rubbish'), but until he's dissolving companies in order to avoid paying fighters he'll never have done anything as bad as Frank Warren.
This is my biggest gripe with Warren I am all for competition for Matchroom but dont like the fact its Warren who has the BT contract. Also it will be interesting to see purse bids for this fight as Warrington will have to accept less money to go back to a non PPV show.
Hearn contacted the IBF and purse bids have now been brought forward to 24 January. Negotiations obviously didn't go well!
Tbh mate I don't think it's Frank's attitude towards the fight in itself, it's more a case of not wanting to get involved with Hearn, in any way. I think this is defiantly going to happen. Whether Frank will want Josh to drop the IBF or not I don't know. I know Josh won't want to drop it and he will be highly confident of beating galahad but Frank is a really weird character, who does things that leaves most of us scratching our heads. He holds all the purse strings and Joshs future in his hands. I've no doubt the deal will be something like. Face galahad for 65% of whoever wins the purse bids. Or Valdez on ppv at elland rd or over in Vegas. Frank will dangle one of those carrots in front, I'm guessing.
If I was Warrington I would be pushing for the Galahad fight as a 'homecoming' fight and I bet it would do 20-25k at Elland Road. Decent money and he would be heavy favourite. Then go to USA.
Thing is with this, with the sky hype machine, Eddie might be thinking about this and contemplating a ppv. That would give him more confidence in the purse bids.
Great post. It's been great to see Frank manage to survive the ever growing Matchroom presence this year and end it so strongly after the BJS affair looked to have him at a low ebb. He's the great survivor of British boxing, in many ways coming back off the canvas just as Fury did...
The problem is that Frank has to deliver ppv to bt and he hasn't that many fighters been able to fulfil that role. Letting Josh fight on sky ppv is letting a potential ppv night slip out of Frank's hands. Sky can generate more on their ppv and this would give Eddie more money for the purse bid.
