Eddie Hearn claims Dillian Whyte will receive a contract for a rematch with long-term rival Anthony Joshua on August 12.
Whyte, 35, hit out at Joshua's promoter after talks for a second professional bout between the pair collapsed. Whyte and Joshua, 33, last fought in December 2015, with AJ stopping the Body Snatcher in the seventh round to win the British heavyweight title.
Whyte claimed Hearn didn't want Joshua to "have a serious fight" against his long-term rival, but the promoter insists he "would love the fight to happen and hopefully it will". British boxing now holds its breath to see if an agreement can finally be reached.
Hearn spoke to Boxing Social on Friday to confirm Joshua's stance. He said: "They say no contact has been made, but they are happy to accept the offer, so they have obviously received the offer. Honestly what happened is, that is the fight I was asked to make.
"We made an offer to Dillian Whyte four or five weeks ago, then they came back and said, 'Absolutely not, this is unacceptably low and nowhere near a number we would accept'. I funnelled that back to AJ and the team and he said, 'Ok, we’ll move onto another opponent'.
"Now they’ve just come out of the blue and said they accept the offer, right when we are final negotiations for another opponent. So we went straight back to Dillian and said, 'Can you confirm you accept the offer?' And they said, 'Yes we do'. So fantastic, they will have a contract today.
"We need to move at pace but if Dillian is serious, that fight can 100 per cent happen. This contract is not going to be difficult, it’s a set purse. There are no travel or extreme media obligations, it’s pretty simple. I would love the fight to happen and hopefully it will."
Hearn's response came after Whyte spoke to talkSPORT earlier on Friday. The boxer said: "The fight's just collapsed, there's been no communication on the fight. It's just weird, it just never seemed real from the start.
"AJ's in a position of transition and they don't want him to have a serious fight, but they're trying to keep his name good and make it look like he's trying to have big fights. We've had one three-line email about the fight, no conversations at all.
"We've been trying to contact Eddie Hearn for one month, multiple phone calls and emails, they've just gone missing. I've never felt the fight was real, I've been negotiating with Eddie Hearn for years, I know when Eddie wants a fight, he calls you, he bugs you.
"I haven't spoken to Eddie Hearn for one month."
After facing Whyte, Joshua is hoping to meet former WBC champion Deontay Wilder in December. The proposed fight is set to take place in Saudi Arabia, with a undisputed heavyweight title fight between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk potentially on the same card.
