Poll: did Joshua duck Wilder or the other way around?

Wilder ducked Joshua. All the evidence points in that direction.

Sad, with all respekt to Fury I wanted Wilder to get completely oblitirated

 

I believe Wilder ducked AJ. This is gonna be lengthy post so I forgive anyone for not wanting to read this.

I followed this news for years and this is all I remember. So in March of 2018 both AJ and Wilder had beat Parker and Ortiz. People were crying for undisputed. Wilder made a career high pay day of 2.1 million dollars and AJ was consistently making 20 mil plus since the Klitschko fight and had sold out literally football stadiums and Wilder had only ever done a gate of 14k. It was clear as day who the bigger draw was of the two. Wilder wasn’t anywhere near as big as he is now and had hardly any clout outside of hard core boxing fans. Only had 300k Instagram followers around the time he beat Ortiz if I recall correctly.

Now I believe at the beginning, so early negotiations around April/ May of 2018 neither were really up for it. AJ wanted undisputed of course but looking at the fight from a financial perspective it wasn’t worth the risk reward for Eddie as AJ could make similar money fighting Povetkin, Whyte again Pulev etc and the U.K. casuals would flock in numbers to buy it since it’s AJ. Wilders first offer was seen as a low ball offer not serious since it was a flat fee of 12.5 million dollars. It was then boosted to 15 mil but they still were not happy one bit.

Okay after these 2 offers Wilder pissed off decides to send a hoax Instagram offer of 50 mil each for them both to fight. It’s definitely not real and doesn’t take much common sense to realise this. Sent over social media, no terms, conditions, refusal of a meeting and an official contract until Eddie and AJ publicly agreed to the deal beforehand. Who does business like that? Also in hindsight you can see how bs it really was. 100 mil fight purse being put up by showtime. Same network that refused Wilder Breazeale as a PPV as it didn’t “financially make sense”. Ha they didn’t have the funds but yet they had the money to put up 100 mil for AJ Wilder? Fury Wilder was a 7 mil purse ffs.

After intense discussions and the hoax 50 mil offer was rejected Wilder decides to give in and take the 15 mil and verbally agrees to the fight. Success! Nah Wilder goes back on his words and sends it back asking for a few amendments. Easy work. Eddie makes the changes and sends it back but they decide not to sign it and they just kept it on their desk for a week. They knew the WBA was on their last straw and were stalling until the Povetkin mandatory was called. Clever bas**rds. WBA said **** it and ordered Povetkin fight. Had to be agreed soon or WBA would be vacated.

Wilder with no opponent goes on a search for bums as he usually does and fortunately for Wilder and his team a former obese cokehead recovering from severe mental health issues fell into his lap. Oh boy they couldn’t believe their luck. A nice wee easy KO win and a good pay day. Should have seen Wilder during Fury Pianetta he was damn near licking his chops, he probably thought he was blessed by the Gods that Fury actually wanted to fight him.

Let’s all be honest this was a clear as day cherrypick from team Wilder. Fury wasn’t ready for it at all but took the fight anyway. Respect to Fury for that but Fury seen something in Wilder and believed no matter if he was only at 50% he could outbox Wilder and win.

Now let’s fast forward to after the events of Fury Wilder 1. Wilder shamelessly gets a gift decision and his fans are all on damage control citing a long count bs. Wilder is frustrated and believed he under performed and badly wants to get that fat gypsy back in the ring and KO him this time. Fury is seen as the beacon of light in the sport of boxing. He’s got mad respect for fighting Wilder in his own backyard only a year and a half after being a 400 lb alcoholic drug addict.

Eddie is desperate at this point to make Joshua Wilder because he seen how vulnerable Wilder truly is in that fight and now has more confidence in AJ to beat him. He massively ups his previous offer and now offers him a 15 mil purse with 40% upside. Wilder and Finkel tells them to **** off and decide to prioritise the Fury rematch.

Fury then shamelessly ducks the Wilder rematch and decided to sign an ESPN 5 fight lucrative deal. ESPN definitely didn’t want Fury to fight Wilder again in his first fight as their contract. If he got chinned in his ESPN debut the deal would be up in flames. They decided to stick Fury in with a couple bums to promote Fury and grow his American fanbase so the Wilder rematch would be bigger.

Okay this is good news for Eddie and AJ? Wilder may just decide to fight AJ now for massive money right? Joshua Wilder April 13th Wembley Wilder offered 20 mil with 40%? “Nah **** off 50/50 or no deal Eddie.” Negotiations fall through again due to egos. WBC pull a Breazeale mandatory out of nowhere despite already ordering Whyte Breazeale as a final eliminator. Bumzeale is there to save the day for Wilder and keep him active.

Okay now DAZN decides to get involved and Wilder is offered a crazy 3 fight deal. 20 mil to fight Breazeale on DAZN(no network had gained exclusive rights at this point) and 40 each mil for 2 AJ fights. Wilder rejected it and instead decided to stay a free agent and doesn’t want to be tied to a network. Okay fine. Clearly a massive duck but okay.

Breazeale fight happens and Wilder looks fantastic. Beat the guy AJ played with for 7 rounds with just one punch. To the filthy casuals he’s seen as better than AJ now. Fast forward to the end of May and Wilder out of the blue just a couple days before Joshua Ruiz decides to announce two rematches with Ortiz and Fury saying they were both signed and will be formally announced soon.

Fury then exposes Wilder and says he hasn’t signed s**t. Ortiz rematch wasn’t actually given a date and a venue(despite Finkel saying one of the main reasona he rejected the 15 mil originally back in 2018 was because of no date or venue) until the end of September lmao but it was already signed yeah? Nah it wasn’t Wilder thought AJ was gonna blitz Ruiz and start calling him out after the fight so decided to announce two bs rematches that weren’t signed and probably not even discussed much either just so AJ wouldn’t call him out and he had an excuse not to fight AJ despite them both being free to fight.

This is why Ortiz rejected 7 mil. They were probably saving Ortiz for Wilder. Also if AJ blitzed Ortiz out of there effortlessly, a guy Wilder went into the trenches with it would have made Wilder look very bad and Haymon can’t have that. Wilder is their golden goose after all.

AJ of course lost to El Tio Gordo and made all the Matchroom and AJ fanboys cry(including me). AJ looks like proper **** now and is seen as a hypejob fraud who would have been sparked by Wilder effortlessly and that’s why he ran from him. God damn that narrative pissed me off so much I could have ripped a King James Bible in half with the rage every time I read. I told those fu**ers styles make fights!

That’s pretty much how the negotiations went. To sum up both weren’t up for it but eventually AJ and Eddie wanted it badly after Fury Wilder 1 but Wilder still wanted no smoke. Wilder ducked in my humble opinion.

TLDR; AJ good Wilder bad

 

Neither side really wanted it but Joshua made more of an effort to make the fight than Wilder, who was all talk.

Somewhere between Wilder ducked Joshua and neither side really wanted is probably about right,

 

And he did and it was absolutely beautiful to watch. I’m not even the biggest Fury fan but I still had a canvas made out of Fury busting up Beyoncé’s lip. God damn what a beautiful experience that was.

 

That’s exactly along the lines of what I wrote except I believe AJ and Eddie were desperate for it after Fury Wilder 1. But before that neither were exactly up for it but Wilder from the get go has avoided the AJ fight like the plague. I explained it all in my very long War and Peace reply but nobody is gonna read all that I don’t think. I wouldn’t read it if someone else wrote it lmao.

 

Haha yeah I skim read it after I posted, It's pretty much how it went down. I think it also came down to the crazy financial demands that Wilder was making (unsure if he actually believed he was worth it or he was just pricing himself out of the fight? Probably the latter) as to why the fight hasn't happened. Joshua was and is a much bigger draw and rightfully wan't keen on giving into the crazy demands, although eventually they did concede a lot of ground, and then came the excuse about Wilder wanting to be a free agent or something ridiculous like that and that's where I lost interest in the whole thing as I concluded Wilder wasn't really serious.

Conclusion:
Joshua didn't really want it.
Wilder REALLY didn't want it.

 

That fact that the fight didn’t happen means neither side wanted the fight enough and when I mean sides I mean the handlers and not the fighters.

 

Where can I read it?

 

It’s the second response in the post.

 

Is it really even up for debate anymore? Wilder's resume is appalling for a reason and it's by design, his team new he would get busted up as soon as he he fought someone good.

 

Really good and deep analysis. Also very unbiased which is good for the casual reader. Do you remember details of the Eddie Hearn signing a Contact in New York city event?

 

Of course aj ducked. Wilder was willing to fight fury twice and after getting totaly wrecked in the second he still wants a third match. Aj on the other hand is and was miles away from fighten any of the 2.

 

Could you elaborate a bit more? Not sure what you mean.

 

Good post and I couldn't agree more, you really broke it down.