After Anthony Joshua defeated Joseph Parker earlier this year, many boxing fans were looking forward to seeing the British boxer fight against Deontay Wilder in a unified heavyweight clash.

Fans waited and waited for the fight to be confirmed, as reports and exchanges on social media expressed that negotiations were ongoing and progress was being made.

However, negotiations came to a standstill, and the WBA intervened as well, forcing Joshua to fight against WBA mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin or vacate the WBA Heavyweight title.

Now, AJ is expected to fight Povetkin on September 22 later this year, while the fight vs Wilder is expected to take place on April 13 next year, according to Joshua's promoter Eddie Hearn.

Both fights are expected to take place in front of 100,000 people at Wembley Stadium as well, and Hearn told Sky Sports News he's confident the fight vs the WBC Heavyweight Champion will happen. 

He said: "I'm pretty confident. I think at the moment he's [Wilder] throwing his toys out of the pram, and eventually we hope he'll come to his senses.

Signing the contract

Hearn revealed as well that Joshua will actually sign the contract now in a bid to kick-start negotiations again with Wilder.

"I spoke to Anthony yesterday and I think what we're going to do is all the terms that were agreed by Deontay Wilder have now been put into the contract.

"They've had them now for over a month, and they haven't done anything, so I think what we're going to do, we're going to sign the contract.

"Anthony Joshua says let's sign the contract and put it in front of them, rather than them thinking that we're bluffing for some bizarre reason, or we don't want the fight.

"Anthony's going to have a press conference for his next fight next week and he'll be in America as well, and it will be good to go out there and say we've done all we can.

"You've agreed these terms, we've now even signed the contract, so fingers crossed, April 13 at Wembley will be Joshua against Wilder."

It seems as though Joshua doesn't want his upcoming fight vs Povetkin to stall any negotiations, so now the ball is in Wilder's court in order to make the fight happen.