Matchroom Boxing Group Managing Director Eddie Hearn looked in fine form, relaxed and collegial at the Thursday press conference to hype the Canelo Alvarez vs. Rocky Fielding face-off.

Ticket sales are moving along nicely and he made clear that he’s thinking his kid Fielding has a good shot to down the red-headed all-star and The Ring Magazine/WBA/WBC middleweight champion. So that aside, after we dodged the masses entering Madison Square Garden to see the Grinch musical, we asked Hearn the latest on that open April date at Wembley Stadium for his heavyweight mega-star IBF/WBA/WBO titleholder Anthony Joshua.

Will he face the winner of the December 22 Dereck Chisora vs. Dillian Whyte tango? Or maybe Jarrell Miller?

“Could be any of those,” he said. Hearn wants to see how Whyte vs Chisora plays out but more than that, “We want (WBC heavyweight titlist) Wilder. That’s the fight. He’s always said one face, one champion, one king of the division. If he really thinks that, he should be fighting Anthony Joshua. On one hand, he says Joshua’s running, then he says we’re begging. Which one is it? We can’t be running and begging to fight him. This is the fight we’ve always wanted; that’s the fight we want. There is a strong chance he could rematch (lineal champion) Fury and if he does do that, we have to look at options, being the winner of Whyte-Chisora, being Jarrell Miller, here, perhaps, being (undisputed cruiserweight champion) Aleksandr Usyk…all these other guys.”

And what of the latest on the possible Amir Khan vs. Kell Brook face-off? The ball is in the court of Amir. “I think he’s got about a week to make up his mind, whether he fights (WBO welterweight titlist Terence) Crawford or whether he fights Brook. From a world title perspective, the Crawford fight is attractive but from a British perspective, the Brook fight is one that everyone’s always wanted. It’s up to Amir. I want him to fight Brook. It’s a massive fight. And if he doesn’t fight him, the whole British public will always say, ‘You didn’t fight Kell Brook.’” Hearn will soon sit down with Team Khan and see what card Khan wants to play.

The Brit deal-maker went on; we discussed the state of pay-per-views. Is PPV dead? Hearn does PPVs in England, after all…“It’s more about the price point. If the price point pay-per-view here was $25, the same as it is in England, it wouldn’t be dead here. It would be very affordable and it would be an affordable option.” He thinks the buys rate for Wilder vs. Fury was “terrible.” Hearn said promoters said Fury vs. Wilder’s 300,000 buys would have netted 1.5 million in the U.K. That’s because the price was too high. And then he noted that DAZN will help move powers that be away from PPV. Another thing: Some promoters in America are giving in to sky-high requests for A-grade fighters. The only way to do that is by using the PPV revenue stream. Hearn said everyone who doesn’t like paying PPV fees should be rooting for DAZN to succeed, bottom line.

Your take, my friends. A few things to ponder here. Who should AJ fight? Who will Khan pick to tussle with next? And what do you make of Hearn’s points about PPV in America? Weigh in, in our comments section.

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