{"id":531096,"date":"2026-03-10T13:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/531096\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T13:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:20:09","slug":"anthony-joshua-made-shock-offer-to-leave-eddie-hearn-as-screenshot-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/531096\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Joshua made shock offer to leave Eddie Hearn as screenshot revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Joshua received an offer to quit Matchroom and join Dana White’s Zuffa Boxing, his promoter Eddie Hearn has revealed.<\/p>\n

Conor Benn confirmed on February 20 that he had left Matchroom to join Zuffa Boxing, which is backed by UFC<\/a> president White<\/a> and funded, in part, by Saudi Arabia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to reports, Benn has signed a one-fight deal for an eight-figure sum believed to be in the region of $15 million.<\/p>\n

Last week, Hearn<\/a> signed reigning UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall<\/a> to the newly-founded Matchroom Talent Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As chairman of the agency, Hearn will ‘manage and service leading talent with care and loyalty’, as well as ‘nurturing athletes’ careers by managing their brand and building their reputations’.<\/p>\n

Hearn told iFL TV<\/a> that he was ‘pretty devastated’ at Benn deciding to exit Matchroom, adding that he had ‘a few back-and-forths’ with the 29-year-old after he was informed of his decision.<\/p>\n

\"ConorConor Benn has joined Zuffa Boxing (Image: Getty)<\/p>\n

“I just felt, everything that we gave him, the loyalty that we gave him, the support we gave him would be enough to talk it through and get close to a number,” Hearn said. “But there wasn’t really the interest.<\/p>\n

“Very surprising. Very painful. But just another moment in life that you live and learn from.”<\/p>\n

The Matchroom chief’s devastation would have been compounded had his most high-profile boxing client, Anthony Joshua<\/a>, decided to accept an offer from White and Zuffa.<\/p>\n

But during an appearance on ‘The Ariel Helwani Show<\/a>‘, Hearn revealed that Joshua informed him of the approach immediately, and had no intention of accepting it.<\/p>\n

“You know, and he won’t mind me saying it, but AJ had an approach about a couple of weeks ago,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Do you know how quickly he sent me the message, the screenshot? Seconds. [He said] ‘Let me know what you want to reply’.<\/p>\n

“It’s like, we’re a team, mate. Until the wheels come off, we are a team. And I’ve got your back, always.”<\/p>\n

Hearn identifies major Zuffa ‘problem’<\/p>\n

During the same appearance, Hearn pinpointed Dana White’s recent press conference comments as potentially being a major issue when it comes to UFC fighters.<\/p>\n

“Dana White was sitting in a press conference last night and he says, ‘Conor Benn making all this money, this is great for UFC fighters’. How?<\/p>\n

“Basically every UFC fighter is looking at that going, ‘This just doesn’t make sense’.<\/p>\n

“And you can’t just hide behind the fact that, ‘Oh, Turki [Alalshikh] is paying that bill’. No, it’s the same company.<\/p>\n

“I’m enjoying sitting back, looking at all the press conferences, and being baffled by what I’m hearing.<\/p>\n

“Probably for the first time in my career – and this was very much the case with the Tom Aspinall stuff – I’m going to work in some silence. Because I need to get this right.<\/p>\n

“It’s going to be very, very interesting what is going to unfold over the next couple of months.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Joshua received an offer to quit Matchroom and join Dana White’s Zuffa Boxing, his promoter Eddie Hearn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[8075,64,63,802,30027,958,9915,85,787],"class_list":["post-531096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-anthony-joshua","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-conor-benn","tag-dana-white","tag-eddie-hearn","tag-sports","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}