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Exclusive: Eddie Hearn unsure of Fury-Wilder 3, talks StubHub controversy

Eddie Hearn

"He was either involved in it turning out the way it did or f***ed up big time so I don’t know which one of the two."

Eddie Hearn has admitted he is unsure as to whether the trilogy fight between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder will happen on October 9.
The rematch - which blocked an undisputed clash between Anthony Joshua and Fury - was originally expected to fight on July 24 only for Fury to test positive for Covid-19.
Fury destroyed Wilder inside seven rounds in 2020 and became just the second fighter after Riddick Bowe to win all four major world titles at heavyweight.

Joshua, who was hoping to face the "Gypsy King" on August 14, will now instead face Oleksandr Usyk on September 24 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

While both Joshua and Fury must now focus on their respective fights, the Matchroom mogul is not convinced on Fury-Wilder.

Video recorded by Fighting Pride.

"I think it's a 50/50 whether it happens at all. You never know with these people," he exclusively told Planet Sport.
"The third fight bombed so badly at the gate that the promoters are looking at it saying how are we going to pay these guys. Who knows but hopefully everything gets cleared and we can move on to the undisputed fight."

When asked if he believed Bob Arum - a qualified lawyer - knew Joshua-Fury was impossible to make for the summer, Hearn said: "I'd like to think not but at the same time that's probably one of the best points someone has made.

"He is a lawyer, he should know about the legal situation better than anyone and he continued to tell us that there was no issue surrounding that hearing. He was either involved in it turning out the way it did or f***ed up big time so I don't know which one of the two - I'd like to think it's the latter and take his word but now it becomes all irrelevant because we're in a monster fight against Usyk that we must win.

"People keep saying do you think that? Honestly ask me on September 26 because at the moment it's totally irrelevant. I don't know if Wilder will fight Fury but I know we're fighting Usyk. AJ has to deal with that and get that win."

READ: Anthony Joshua backed to exploit southpaw star

StubHub controversy

The popularity of Joshua is no secret. He is the biggest ticket seller in the UK as well as the most lucrative on pay-per-view.

However, Joshua-Usyk sold out within 90 minutes of release and tickets were instantly being put back online with buyers profiting more than five times its original price. 

Matchroom - who sell tickets via StubHub - have come in for some criticism, especially during a pandemic where money is hard to come by for some.
Grilled on the subject, Hearn agreed about something must be done about it and they will be working on permitting people from reselling tickets hours after they have purchased them.
"I think unfortunately when you get a massive event like that people try and make money out of reselling their tickets - I don't like it. I think the ticket resale market now can provide a good service because especially the world we're living in, in isolation where you can get pinged and stuff like that where sometimes you might want to resell your ticket and you can't go.
"I think one thing that has to be stopped is doing it immediately after because ultimately you're trying to just benefit from getting a ticket. We don't make any money or have any association with secondary market tickets and really, all I'm doing is giving you a ticket cheap for you to make money when you shouldn't even be making money.
"From a resale perspective we like to be able to monitor it and StubHub is one place we know every single ticket. We can pull that ticket from that seller and know that it's a genuine ticket. If you go on a lot of these other sites they're advertising tickets that don't even exist.

"There was something like 2,000 tickets out of 65,000 tickets on a resale market but for me there has to be a cap. Like you can't buy a ticket at two o'clock and at six o'clock say, 'oh I can't go now.' Come on. Is there a period after that where if you genuinely can't go, the resale market will provide a good opportunity for that so I understand people.

"Every time there's a major event we could have sold 200,000 tickets - we had 52,000 in the online queue when we went on sale. We could have sold 200,000 tickets. We always make sure these things are monitored - it's a proper process.
"Ultimately the resale of tickets is not illegal. It happens everywhere and it only happens by the way in major events but when it obviously gets flagged up. I think we just need to look at ways in which people don't just profit over the price of tickets because quite frankly I would rather profit than some bloke who has just picked up a ticket and done nothing.
"People say to me, a good way to avoid the secondary market is increase your face value tickets. Well that isn't going to go down well either is it?
"At the same time if I'm selling a £100 ticket and someone is actually selling it for £1,000 then surely I should be making that ticket for £400-500 - we don't want to do that. We think we provide a good quality price on tickets but it's definitely something we continue to monitor," Hearn added.

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