Boxing news: Is Floyd Mayweather to BLAME for Anthony Joshua vs Deontay Wilder delay?

That’s the suggestion of ESPN sports broadcaster Stephen A. Smith.

Deontay Wilder’s brutal first-round demolition of Dominic Breazeale at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York on Saturday has prompted fresh demand for the American to face off with British rival Anthony Joshua.

Joshua owns three of the division’s four belts with the IBF, WBO and WBA while Wilder occupies the WBC strap, which he successfully defended for the ninth time by knocking out Breazeale and improving his record to 41-1-0.

Joshua fights in New York himself on June 1 when he makes his United States debut against Andy Ruiz Jr at Madison Square Garden.

It is hoped that should Joshua retain his belts against the Mexican, fresh negotiations can be opened for Joshua and heavy-hitter Wilder to finally share the ring.

The pair have long been tipped to go head-to-head but negotiations have proven difficult between the camps of the two fighters, with both demanding different shares of the purse.

Wilder frustrated some fans after KO’ing Breazeale by declaring: “This fight will happen. The big fight will happen, I promise you that, with patience, come time, and I just want you guys to have patience and give us a little time to make this thing happen so we all benefit from it, not only just you fans.

“We risk our lives in here so we want to make sure we get the best and the most money that’s possible.”

And television and radio personality Smith thinks that the current culture within boxing of making fans wait for the biggest and best fights began with Mayweather, who fought welterweight rival Manny Pacquaio in 2015 after as long as six years after the fight was first being eyed.

Smith told Fight Hype in Brooklyn after Wilder’s win over Breazeale: “Those are the fights all of us want to see and I’m of the mindset that I don’t blame the fighters, I blame the promoters. 

“The promoters recognise that the longer you wait, the more money there is to be made. 

“I think that Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather manipulated that brilliantly, more than anybody. When you saw how much money he made after making everybody wait for so many years for him and Pacquiao, everybody seems to be following the same formula where we wait, we wait, we wait. 

“Errol Spence Jr. and Terence Crawford wanna fight but we gotta wait, Pacquaio getting ready to fight Keith Thurman. The fights we really want to see, we had to wait a little bit too long for GGG-Canelo. 

“This is what happens because you’ve got these affiliations, you don’t have someone definitely overseeing the sport. I think that’s why the UFC has grown in popularity. 

“The biggest reason that I believe the UFC has grown in the United States of America is because they go about the business of giving you the fights you want to see when you want to see them. They don’t make you wait years because Dana White oversees the sport and he mandates that everybody gets in the octagon and fights. 

“We don’t have that one dude overseeing the sport of boxing so somebody like Mayweather comes into the scene and takes control of his own career, calls his own shots and manipulates the public in such a fashion that he makes you wait. 

“People have learned how to make you wait and build the momentum of the product. 

“With that being the reality, Anthony Joshua, Deontay Wilder, look they’re fighters, they’ll fight each other any time but there’s a reason they haven’t grabbed their promoters and said, ‘Damn it, make the fight now.’ 

“Because the promoters have convinced them, the longer they wait, the more money there is waiting down the pipe. As long as that’s the reality, that’s what they’ll keep doing to us; making us wait.”

source: express.co.uk