By Scott Gilfoid: While Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn is confident he’ll be able to make the Chris Eubank Jr. vs. Gennady Golovkin fight this week, he’s only got 48 to 72 hours for the deadline otherwise Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler are moving on towards another opponent.
They wasted valuable time on trying to get a fight against Mexican star only to be put off until the fall of 2017. They’re not going to make that same mistake again by waiting on Eubank Jr., especially if he’s not really serious about wanting the fight.
It’s still unknown whether Eubank Jr. really wants the Golovkin fight or he’s been using this as a way to create badly needed publicity for himself on the cheap. By calling out Golovkin 24/7 for the last month, it’s made Eubank Jr. more well-known than any of his previous fights put together in his pro career. The thing is, Eubank Jr. hasn’t even fought Golovkin and he’s getting tons of attention from the media.
If Eubank Jr. decides to slink away without fighting Triple G, then Loeffler and Golovkin will have been jerked around for the second time in a row. As such, the deadline by Golovkin and Loeffler is a very good idea. If it were me, I would have given Eubank Jr. a 24 hour deadline. 48-72 hours is too kind. Golovkin needs to get an opponent and pronto or else he’ll wind up fighting just twice in 2016 instead of three to four times like he usually does.
“I know they want the fight and I know Golovkin will take the fight. It will be my job in the next 48-72 hours to get that closed off and produce another huge event,” said Hearn to skysports.com. “I am waiting for the Eubanks to turn round and say we’re not serious, it’s just for a bit of press and PR. They are deadly serious and we took another major step to that fight now, and I believe this fight will be made this week, I really do,” said Hearn.
It doesn’t matter what Hearn believes. He can believe anything he wants, but unless Eubank Jr. puts pen to paper to sign the contract in the next two to three days, the fights not going to happen because GGG is going to move on. Did you see the part where Hearn says he keeps thinking that the Eubanks will say they were doing this just for the press?
That means Hearn doesn’t entirely know whether they’re both on the level or not about wanting the Golovkin fight. That’s not good, is it? If a promoter isn’t sure if his own fighter is just name dropping to get publicity, then it’s definitely bad. If that turns out to be the case, then how will Hearn go about trying to get other important fights for Eubank Jr. in the future? If Hearn is not sure whether Eubank Jr. is serious about wanting to fight the best, will he put in a ton of hard work to try and get a big fight for him?
“The danger is that everybody talks about fighting people, you’ve seen Golovkin was supposed to fight Canelo, Canelo decided to swerve that fight,” said Hearn.
Hearn is right about the top fighters taking about wanting to fight GGG, but then they don’t do it, which is a good reason why Golovkin’s team needs to set short deadlines each time with fighters that are supposedly interested in fighting them. By making this move, Team Golovkin can weed out quickly the name droppers that are just looking for free publicity for their careers from the serious ones that actually want to fight him. This is a management move that should have been over a year ago in my view, because fighters have been name dropping Golovkin’s name for a while now without fighting him. If Golovkin and Loeffler had set a short deadline with Canelo, they would have been able to cut him and Golden Boy off quickly and moved on to serious opponents that want to fight him.
Chris Eubank Sr. was talking about wanting the first dollar that drops from the promotion to go to Eubank Jr. He was babbling about that at the post-fight press conference last Saturday night. I still don’t know what Eubank Sr. was talking about. Hearn wasn’t saying anything explain what Eubank Sr. was talking about.