Anthony Joshua offered $50M to unify titles with Deontay Wilder

The ball is in Anthony Joshua’s court. After the unified heavyweight champion dared Deontay Wilder to come up with a $50M purse for an undisputed heavyweight title unification, Wilder’s team has done just that while Wilder posted this video on Instagram.

If there were any thoughts that Wilder might just be calling Joshua’s bluff, Wilder’s co-manager Shelly Finkel confirmed to Sky Sports that their ‘take it of leave it’ offer to Joshua is in fact legitimate, but that Joshua has until midnight tonight (UK time) to accept the deal. Once the clock strikes 12, however, well, you’ve all seen Cinderella before...

“We want [Joshua] to fight Deontay in his next fight and we offered him $50m,” he told Sky Sports.

”If he accepts it, it will be there. Al Haymon and I have never not delivered what we’ve offered.

“We were offered $12.5m (£8.8m) to fight him but we have offered four times that. If [Joshua] says he is not going to take $50m, it means he doesn’t really want to fight him next.”

Wilder’s offer would guarantee Joshua 50% of the revenue against his guaranteed $50M purse, but would also give Wilder’s team promotional control over the venue and the show. That said they did express their willingness to stage the fight overseas.

Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn also acknowledged that he received Wilder’s offer via email and though he doubts Wilder has that money lined up, he says he’ll have to take the offer seriously if he in fact does.

“With all due respect to Deontay Wilder, I don’t believe he has $50m. However, if they actually send some formal paperwork and a contract along with further details on how this money will be secured, we will definitely have to take this seriously.

”We have a meeting on Friday, so let’s see how real this is.”