By Dan Ambrose: Chris Eubank Jr’s promoter Eddie Hearn says he gave him and his father Chris Eubank Sr. a deadline for them to agree to the contract terms for a fight against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin for a fight in September, but they let the deadline pass without agreeing to what he had asked them. You have to wonder whether Eubank Jr. and his father Chris Eubank Sr. were ever really serious about wanting to fight Golovkin. There are some who believe that they used this Golovkin fight opportunity for publicity purposes rather than have true interest in fighting him. They would have made a fortune if they had agreed to the contract and signed.
Hearn feels that the Eubanks might have thought he was bluffing when it came to his deadline. He wasn’t though. When the deadline passed, Hearn went ahead and offered the same deal terms that he had offered the Eubanks to IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook, and he readily agreed. So instead of Eubank Jr. fighting Golovkin next, it’ll be Brook fighting the Kazakhstan fighter on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, England.
The Golovkin-Brook fight will be televised on Sky Box Office pay-per-view in the UK, and on HBO World Championship Boxing in the United States.
Hearn says the Eubanks wanted operational control of the promotion for the Golovkin fight. He said they wanted to increase the ticket prices by making them double what he normally charges for Anthony Joshua’s fights. Hearn says he wasn’t going to go for that.
“I made the fight in terms everybody agreed on and in terms of the Golovkin said,” said Hearn to IFL TV. “On the pay-per-view side, it’s very straight forward. As a fighter, you own the revenue of the show. So whatever money the show makes is yours, and I take a percentage, a commission on that net profit. It’s the same thing for Anthony Joshua. It’s the same thing for Carl Froch. It’s the same deal Kell Brook accepted. Unfortunately for the Eubanks, they wanted operational control on everything that has to do with the show. They’re not promoters. They don’t know what they’re doing. I wasn’t going to have anything to do with that kind of show. I went back to them and said, ‘Listen, this is the deal; it’s the same deal as Anthony Joshua. It’s the same deal as Froch, You own the show. You own the money, but we are the promoters, and ultimately it’s our license, it’s our brand. It’s our image we built up over 30 years of promoting boxing and you’ve got until 5:00 p.m. tomorrow.’ That was on Thursday, and they didn’t come back to me, I called Kell Brook that night. We talked about the [Jessie] Vargas fight. I got back to Tom Loeffler and within 24 hours, Kell Brook accepted the deal that Chris Eubank didn’t. So opportunity knocks for him. Obviously, it’s a huge, huge payday. It’s more than that. He’s fighting the best fighter in the world, the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Kell Brook is at a disadvantage at this weight, but he’s a huge welterweight. I always wanted him to step up to light middle. Now he’s going one further. Knowing what Gennady Golovkin will be on the night, and knowing we’ve got a check weight on the Saturday with the IBF, I’m happy that there won’t be a huge size difference on the night. This is the fight we’ve wanted for a long time. He had to run to a guy that everybody is running from,” said Hearn.
In speaking about the Eubanks, Hearn said, “If they have ideas in how a deal should work, then you can’t really blame anyone? We don’t work like that. We have a standard format for all pay-per-view fighters. It’s hugely lucrative. He [Eubank Jr.] would have made millions of pounds, but Chris Eubank Sr. was very, very difficult. They thought it was a negotiation fight, but I wasn’t calling their bluff. I told them there’s a deadline to make the fight. They wanted to make it double the Anthony Joshua ticket process. I mean, I’m not very popular, but can you imagine if I did that? I’m not having it. It’s the Matchoom brand that we built up. Some of the demands they wanted were absolutely ridiculous. So I had to give them a deadline and they let that pass, because I guess they thought I was bluffing, but I wasn’t. Now Kell Brook has an amazing opportunity. I think it’s a disadvantage for Kell. Of course, it is, and it was for Amir Khan as well. Amir has never been a big welterweight, and Kell is a huge welterweight. I’m not worried about the size. Kell knows what he’s getting himself into. He’s still the IBF welterweight champion of the world. That won’t change, win, lose or draw. This is a chance to go and completely blow the world boxing. It’s a chance to become the No.1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world. How many chances do you get to do that in life? We were really close [in Jessie Vargas – Kell Brook negotiations]. When I was looking to make the Gennady Golovkin-Junior fight, it was always a struggle, because it was two pay-per-view dates. It was always going to be messy, but we had to make a fight for Kell Brook. We were prepared to go with that and swallow, but then this came up. It was a no-brainer, so we now move onto the Golovkin fight. We don’t let a boxer [Eubank Jr.] and an ex-boxer [Eubank Sr.] set ticket prices. No, I don’t speak to Chris Eubank Jr. I’m not allowed. Everything is done with Sr. He’s got a big future. Maybe he can fight the winner. If the deal is good enough for Kell Brook, Anthony Joshua and Carl Froch, then it’s got to be good enough for Chris Eubank. I don’t mind giving them all the money, but you’ve got to let me do my thing. I’m not going to have a fighter and an ex-boxer tell me who’s going to commentate, and what the ticket process are going to be or who’s going to be on the undercard and what they’re going to be paid. We set a budget and we work together to maximize revenue for the show. It’s a real straight forward model. It wasn’t to be. Opportunity knocks for Kell Brook,” said Hearn.