LONDON, England — The “mental, crazy and dangerous” heavyweight fight between two-time world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua and 13-fight novice Jake Paul has a “50/50” chance of happening, according to promoter Eddie Hearn.
The Matchroom boss, Joshua’s promoter for his entire professional career, had exploratory talks with Nakisa Bidarian about the fight on Wednesday and is convinced Paul is serious about his desire to fight AJ.
Ever since he kicked off his boxing career, the former You Tuber has always hit the headlines by calling out the sport’s biggest names, promising to one day beat Canelo Alvarez to become world champion.
But Paul is now thinking even bigger than that and has recently set his sights on 6ft 6in Joshua (28-4, 25 KOs) former world champion and 2012 Olympic gold medalist, who boasts knockout victories over Wladimir Klitschko, Alexander Povetkin and Kubrat Pulev.
However, with the Tyson Fury fight that Joshua so desperately craves seemingly in danger of never happening, his team have been approached about a number of different potential fights. One of them is Paul and Hearn says the idea has legs following his call with Paul’s business partner.
“This is very real,” Hearn said when asked by The Ring about Joshua-Paul.
“I had a good chat for about an hour with Nakisa on [July 30] and now I believe they want the fight. I really do.
“Nakisa was very honest and he’s concerned about the fight, but Jake truly believes he can win the fight or at least be competitive in it.
“And now because of the size of the fight, it leads me to believe there’s a very good chance it could happen. If I had to rate that chance I would say it’s 50:50. It was a very positive conversation and we expect that conversation to extend over the coming weeks.
“If they really want it, it will happen.”
Paul, 28, was last in action in June when he claimed a unanimous decision against former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. after 10 rounds at Honda Center in Anaheim, California. Before that he had beaten 59-year-old Mike Tyson over eight-twos in November.
Joshua, meanwhile, has been out of action since he was knocked out by Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium in September last year in his bid to become a three-time heavyweight champion. That night, he weighed just over 252lbs, while Paul was just under 200lbs for his fight with Chavez.
But Hearn says Paul will look to pack on the pounds for what would be his first fight at heavyweight.
“There wouldn’t be such a huge difference,” Hearn said. “Jake would be a heavyweight on the night.
“But, look, I can’t even necessarily justify it to you. It’s a mismatch in my opinion, it’s dangerous in my opinion but this is a guy, a cruiserweight who will be a heavyweight.
“I think Joshua is probably yet to get his head round it until he knows that it’s a possibility. After my call this week I’d say it’s definitely a possibility.
“AJ understands the commercial world and will look at this and see that it’s huge. It would probably be the biggest fight that could ever happen anywhere. It would be right up there with his biggest purses ever. You can talk about the boxing world but this would be the outer world.”
Hearn also believes that the nature of the potential beating that Paul is facing could “evaporate” him from the boxing world a little over five years into his fighting career.
He added: “I said to Nakisa the other day that this is about the fear factor. This is dangerous. This is like tuning in to watch David Blaine but much more dangerous and much more real. You’re not trying to escape from a box in three minutes, you’re in there with one of the biggest punchers of all time and it isn’t a game.
“It’s never I’ve called for or told people we’re targeting this, but I do also understand the colossal size of this fight commercially and probably the appetite from a lot of people to evaporate Jake Paul from the boxing world. That is probably what this does.”
