The eyes of the boxing world will be fixed upon the press conference for the fight between Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz Jr. in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, but Deontay Wilder is doing his best to divert the attention to him.
But Joshua's promoter, Eddie Hearn, said his star fighter is not going to focus on Wilder, the current WBC heavyweight titleholder, and is instead only focused on reclaiming the heavyweight titles from Ruiz that he lost in their fight in June.
"Let me tell you about Deontay Wilder, and acutally right now there's no point us talking about Deontay Wilder, because the focus is Andy Ruiz," Hearn told Sky Sports .
Wilder is expected to have a rematch against Luis Ortiz, and momentum had seemed to have been building for a rematch against Tyson Fury. However, Wilder now said he wants to have a chance to unify the heavyweight belts by facing the winner of the Ruiz-Joshua match.
"I would want [Fury] to step aside, which I think he would do anyway," Wilder said. "I think he would, but I would want him to do it as well, to give a unification.
"In my opinion, I don't feel Fury wants to fight me anyway," Wilder also said. "If this opportunity opportunity comes up, I think Fury will pass up his opportunity, he would want me to fight for the unification, and then come back and fight him."
Hearn said that before the first Ruiz fight, Joshua had been distracted by questions of when he would face Wilder for a potential opportunity to unify.
"For the last nearly two years, every question going into an AJ fight was 'when are you going to fight Wilder? Oh Ruiz, don't worry about Ruiz, when's the Wilder fight?' He fell into that trap before," Hearn said to Sky Sports, referring to the June 1 fight in which Ruiz upset Joshua with a seventh-round technical knockout. "We're not going to fall into that trap again. Forget Deontay Wilder, let him go and box Tyson Fury. The biggest fight in the heavyweight division is Joshua-Ruiz. That's the focus."
Joshua himself has even admitted that as the talk of a potential undisputed fight started to come up, it distracted his attention from his June fight against Ruiz.
"That undisputed stuff? It was right in front of me, but it was one of the biggest curses lingering over my head when I was champion," Joshua told Sky Sports.
Joshua will take on Ruiz on Dec. 7 in Saudi Arabia with the WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO heavyweight belts on the line.