Eddie Hearn says he’s now confident that the rematch between Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk will be going ahead as originally planned for late June.
Hearn confirms that Usyk (19-0, 13 KOs) will be taking the fight with Joshua (24-2, 22 KOs) after all, and he hopes to make an announcement soon.
Usyk, 34, has been defending his country Ukraine from the Russian invasion, and it was unknown until this week whether he would choose to take the rematch with Joshua at this critical time.
This weekend, Hearn will be speaking with Usyk’s promote Alex Krassyuk to iron out the date and the venue for the fight. Ideally, Hearn wants the Joshua-Usyk 2 rematch to be staged in the UK, but we’ll have to see.
If there’s more money to be made by staging the fight in the Middle East, that’s where it could wind up. There’s a tremendous amount of interest worldwide in the Joshua vs. Usyk II fight, given all that’s on the line.
“I’ve got more calls with Alex Krassyuk tonight and this weekend where we’re starting to finalize the date and the venue, but we got to the point where we said, ‘we need to know,'” said Hearn to iFL TV.
Despite Joshua’s loss to Usyk last September, Hearn is confident that AJ will avenge the loss and get it right by using his size and strength to overpower the smaller fighter.
Hearn believes that Joshua will turn things around in the rematch with Usyk just as he did in his second fight against Andy Ruiz Jr. in 2019. What will complicate things for Joshua is that Usyk won’t slack off during camp, skip workouts and come into the fight in the 280s like Ruiz did in the rematch.
“We’ve kind of put the pressure on saying ‘We need to know what’s going on,’ and what appears to be going on is that fight is taking place in June,” said Eddie Hearn to Fight Stars TV about the Anthony Joshua vs. Oleksandr Usyk II rematch.
“We’ve got some more conversations with [Usyk promoter] Alex Krassyuk over the weekend, but I’m very confident that fight is next after a few backward and forwards.
“I think that we’re going to be in a position to announce that fight soon,” said Hearn about the Joshua – Usyk 2 rematch for late June.
Joshua was beaten by Usyk by a 12 round unanimous decision last September in London in a massive upset.
It was believed going into that fight that it would be a forgone conclusion that Joshua would be too big, too powerful, and too fast for the smaller Usyk, but he made the mistake of trying to box him.
That decision wound up being a costly one for Joshua, as he was totally outboxed by the former undisputed cruiserweight champion Usyk and made to look bad.
