Joshua haters: who should the man have fought?

No one because he shouldn't have won Gold at the Olympics.

 

Why do people keep talking about this out of context?

Please, just think clearly for one minute! Think about the timeline of these negotiations. I'm using my memory here but you can check the dates if you so wish as I'm sure the order of things went like this;

Early 2018
AJ and Wilder are in "talks" - talking a lot over media, "50million", "its in the bag" etc. This claimed offer is supported by Al Haymon and Shelly Finkel, 2 respected people in the business who don't talk a lot of rubbish over media.

AJ's comments on the offer; "It’s the first time I’ve ever had issues on the financial side for a fight. Let’s say for instance that $50 million we spoke about. Listen, it’s a hell of a lot of money and an honor to even have that number thrown at me. But when you dissected it and what it was, it was kind of like a rights fee–we own you for this amount of money. The issue that I had is that I’ve got long-standing contracts in place and certain partnerships. So you may put that money forward and think you own me 100% but you may only own 50%, so that makes their 50 worth 25%.”

Late 2018
Fury takes the Wilder fight. It's a draw and Wilder promises Fury a rematch.

2019
DAZN offer Wilder 100mill 3-fight deal which Wilder declines in favour of the Fury rematch and due to the disrespect from DAZN during their meeting.
John Skipper, Executive Chairman of DAZN states;
“In retrospect, I was too brash going in there without creating the relationships I needed to create with the people who advised Deontay Wilder. I have now worked to do that. It has to do with going back to the education I needed before getting into boxing … When we left that (Wilder) meeting, I knew we messed up and that we weren’t going to be successful.
We were impatient, and after having some early success, we wanted to move quickly. Now I understand that I’ve got to work relationships, work within a framework and understand other peoples’ self-interests and needs as well … If I had to do it again, I’d have gone in and said, ‘I’m playing the long game.’ I’m playing the long game with Canelo and GGG, too.”

Still 2019
Fury declines an immediate rematch and asks Wilder for 2 warm-up fights prior to Wilder Fury 2

2020
Wilder Fury 2 happens and Fury wins, there is a rematch clause which Fury tries to get out of.
Wilder states how he turned down a lot of money for the AJ fight to keep his word to Fury and that he should stop trying to weasel out of their agreement.

2020 onwards
People with a bad memory try to claim Wilder dodged AJ.

What we did actually learn is that both AJ and Wilder have been very honest. AJ turned down the huge money as he didn't feel it was beneficial to his business interests and Wilder turned down the big money as he didn't like being disrespected by DAZN.

DAZN messed up the 100mill deal, they accept this!

I'm sure we have all been in a situation when somebody with money or power talks like **** to us and we don't like it, maybe at work. Most of us don't have the integrity and values that Wilder has and just take the **** and accept our payslips.

Credit to Wilder for being a man of his word and not accepting some suit talking to him like a nobody!

 

Good post.
In both cases it shows that legitimate offers were made but not in the right way and not with the correct research and groundwork.

People are too quick to blame fighters or blame one side over the other, but huge deals like those never fall through because of "ducking". They fall through because of relationships, loyalties, bad faith and bad negotiations which the fighters themselves have little control of.