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According to Alexander Povetkin’s promoter, Andriy Ryabinskiy, Povetkin has every intention of coming between a potential undisputed heavyweight title unification featuring Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder.
“Povetkin is now a mandatory contender to Anthony Joshua.
”He was appointed by WBA. Now there are 150 days to arrange the fight, it must take place.
”Before the fight with Sasha, Joshua has no right to fight with anybody else. We have 30 days to negotiate,” he added.
Povetkin is just coming off of a knockout win over David Price last weekend, and has been targeting a title fight since losing a shot at Deontay Wilder over some positive drug tests. And despite these latest statements from Povetkin’s promoter, it had already seemed like a long shot that Joshua would unify titles with Wilder in his next outing.
BUT assuming that Joshua and his promoter Eddie Hearn were really set on making the Wilder fight happen, they could petition the WBA for a special exception. This would seem likely to be granted as there hasn’t been an undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis in 1999.