Who is lying?

[ono]

In my opinion Joshua is the best of the 3. He is the most consistent, has the wider range of attributes and has fought much better opposition than either Wilder or Fury. Despite being erratic, I think Wilder is the second best. Not in terms of technical ability, but in terms of the overall package. Fury is the most fluid, but that is as much down to style as anything else. It's easy to look light on your toes when you're facing limited threat. Against Klitschko, we saw a much more herky-jerky sort of performance. Weirdly, as time as gone by, his performance in the Wlad fight has been elevated to the point where it matches the actual achievement, which isn't quite try. The idea that he boxed Wlad's head off is an absolute myth. He literally out-landed him by around 3 punches per round. Regardless, it was a great win. One minor thing that irks me is that people directly compare Joshua's performance against Wlad with Fury's and then use it to highlight Fury's superiority. It's a weak argument because it ignores the fact that styles make fights and it also totally doesn't take into consideration the intangibles of the fight. For example, it ignores the fact that Joshua was ahead on the cards and had just put Wlad down when he got caught himself going for the finish. Fury never came close to even taking a risk in his fight so he was never likely to be put in that situation. Joshua almost has a responsibility to put on a show and the fact that he does is such a big reason for him being an absolute mega star. Anyway, my thoughts are that both Wilder and Joshua are too much for even a peal Fury. Too much aggression and neither would show anywhere near the same hesitancy as Wlad did. Wilder, in particular is a stylistic nightmare for Fury IMO. As for Wilder - Joshua, I think Joshua is the better fighter, but I think it's hard to pick against Wilder landing something so it's so hard to call. If pushed, i'd go with Wilder, but I still think Joshua is the better fighter. As I said earlier, styles make fights.

[ono]

With regards to what the OP is asking with "who is lying?" to me it is blatantly obvious what Finkel and Wilder have been doing over the last 4 months or so. To the point where I would actually question the sanity of anybody who believes otherwise. Looking at the situation factually, using information that has been confirmed by the parties involved, I will try and wade through the bullshit in the clearest way possible.

I'll start with the biggest issue and that is the "fact" that Hearn/Joshua turned down $50m to fight Wilder. I don't actually know where to start with this one because there are so many holes in the whole thing. Firstly, the biggest red flag and the biggest indicator that the offer was a publicity stunt is the fact that the offer was that the money was being fronted by BT Sport, with the catch being the fight would be broadcast on BT Sport (confirmed by Warren in a recent interview with Boxing Social or Boxing Kingdom - can't remember which one. If that isn't enough to tell you that the offer isn't serious, I don't know what to tell you. Every man and his dog knows that Hearn works exclusively with Sky Sports in the UK and Joshua, at the time of the offer, still had 6 months remaining on his Sky deal, meaning he couldn't legally fight on BT Sport until December. But given that Joshua has been with SKY and Matchroom since turning pro, it was very obvious that he would be signing a new deal with them, particularly given the state of play with DAZN - He has since signed a new deal. Now this new information has emerged, it makes total sense as to why Finkel wouldn't explain where the money was coming from (he lead people into believing Showtime and Haymon were fronting the money, and Espinosa from Showtime sort of joined in without saying anything too committal). It also makes sense as to why Finkel flat out refused to send a contract or even meet to discuss the offer (because the first thing discussed at this meeting or the first thing listed in the contract would be the broadcaster/funding source). Imagine refusing to actually meet someone to discuss a deal, when the person you have offered the deal to has come back and said they're very interested.

Aside from the offer, there are plenty of inconsistencies in how Finkel apparently does business when doing business with Fury vs how he wanted to do business with Joshua. For example, he couldn't get his old head around the fact that a fight can be signed without a venue or date (this was his excuse for not signing the Joshua contract). However, he is fine with the Fury fight having no venue or date. Weird. He also tried to perpetuate the myth that fighters agree to fights before seeing a contract, yet sent Fury a contract BEFORE Fury agreed to the fight (listen to Fury's comments post Pianetta fight...something along the lines of "they called, I answered, they asked me to fight, I said send me a contract, they sent one and then I said YES"). Again, Finkel had a huge problem with sending Joshua a contract with prior agreement (although what I said earlier explains why). Furthermore, Finkel has tried to draw attention to the fact that Joshua didn't physically sign the latest contract, yet later admitted in an interview with The Boxing Voice that he knows only Hearn's signature is necessary to make the fight. Again, he knew this anyway as he was involved in the Joshua - Klitschko negotiation. Finally, he's also tried to perpetuate the myth that Hearn begged the WBA to call the mandatory. The WBA actually called the mandatory in the first week of April. By the end of June, Hearn was 8 weeks overdue on making the Povetkin fight. The WBA probably would have allowed him an extra few weeks had Finkel not done the interview with Dan Rafael where he stated that on the 26th June, he still needed 4 days to send comments back to Hearn on a contract he actually agreed to on the 12th June. He stated that the comments were minor but wouldn't divulge what they were.

At this exact point, Wilder then posted a tweet @'ing the WBA, demanding that they strip Joshua for not making the Povetkin fight. Ask yourself, is this the actions of a man who wants to face Joshua for all of the belts? Anyway, after going down the Povetkin route, Hearn then publicly declared that the previously agreed deal was still on the table, plus an additional offer for Wilder to make $5m for fighting any top 15 fighter. After declaring that there was no cut off date on the offer, Wilder changed his demands from whatever he had previously agreed to "50-50 or nothing" in a deliberate ploy to price himself out.

At this point, it is worth stating that Fury has recently come out and explained how easy it was to negotiate with Wilder/Finkel and how negotiations had taken no time at all. However, Frank Warren, in the same interview where he talked about the BT $50m offer, also admitted that negotiations for a Wilder/Fury fight had actually started in June, which by my calculations was roughly the exact same point in time where Finkel and Wilder started self-sabotaging the Joshua deal. How odd.