EDDIE HEARN said an offer has been sent to Dillian Whyte to fight Anthony Joshua next.
The heavyweights were in negotiations for August 12 but Hearn came out to say the deal broke down.
So a fuming Whyte, 35, hit back to SunSport and claimed he never down the fight as no real offer was ever made.
Hearn has since responded and revealed a contract was being sent Whyte's way in a late bid to get the bout on.
He told Boxing Social: “They say no contact has been made but they’re happy to accept the offer, so they’ve obviously received the offer.
“Obviously what’s happened is that that’s the fight I was asked to make.
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“We made an offer to Dillian Whyte four or five weeks ago and they came back and the exact wording was ‘absolutely not, this is unacceptably low’ and basically nowhere near a number that they’d accept.
“I funneled that back to AJ and the team and we said, ‘okay, we’ll move onto another opponent’. That was it.
“Now they come out today out of the blue and say ‘we accept that offer’, right when we’re about to announce or are in final negotiations with another opponent.
“We went straight back to Dillian and said ‘can you confirm that you accept that offer’ and they said ‘yes, we do’ and I said ‘fantastic’, so we’re getting them a contract.
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“They’ll have a contract today, we need to move at pace but if they’re serious that fight can 100 per cent happen.
“It’s still the fight that AJ wants for August 12th so again, if Dillian is serious, that fight is going to happen.”
Joshua, 33, is also in talks to face Deontay Wilder, 37, in Saudi Arabia in December but wants another bout beforehand.
So AJ is fighting against the clock to get an opponent finalised but Hearn hopes a deal with Whyte – beaten by Joshua in 2015 – can be wrapped up.
He said: “This contract is not going to be difficult.
"It’s a set purse, there’s no travel or obscene media obligations – he’s going to have to attend the press conference and get whatever tickets he wants and things like that, but it’s pretty simple.
“We don’t want to come back with a million things on the contract.
"We do have to move at pace because it’s seven weeks on Saturday, but I’d love that fight to happen and hopefully they’re real.”
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