By Scott Gilfoid: Former two division world champion David Haye spent a good portion of Wednesday’s press conference trash talking Tony Bellew’s promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport. Haye claims that Hearn wanted his name first on the Bellw vs. Haye posters. He also says that he thinks that Hearn sticks his face into the picture each time his fighters are being interviewed.
Haye thinks that Hearn tries to make everything about himself rather than his fighters. In other words, he sees him trying to take the limelight away from his fighters. Haye said that he’s going to close Matchroom Sport down by beating Bellew and Hearn’s top fighter IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.
As reportedly earlier, the big news of today was Bellew and Haye getting into a physical altercation at their press conference on Wednesday. Bellew shoved Haye out of the blue, and Haye came back with a short left hook to the head of Bellew that caused the press conference to erupt. I don’t know what was worse the altercation or all the trash talking that came from it. I could barely understand what the two fighters were saying. Actually, I couldn’t understand much of anything Bellew said.
Haye said it’s the “Eddie Hearn Show” with Hearn, and he wants to “shut his big mouth” and “shut down” Matchroom. “After I take out this guy [Bellew], I’m going to take out Joshua and shut down your business,” said Haye.
In speaking about his negotiations with Hearn for the Bellew fight, Haye said, “The only demand Eddie Hearn had was that his name came first on the fight posters.”
Hearn and his Matchroom Sport promotions will obviously be fine even if Haye knocks out both Bellew and Joshua. Matchroom has a contract with Sky Sports to televise his fighters on their network, which means that his fighter will continue to be shown on that network regardless of what happens with Joshua and Bellew. Hearn has a TON of top fighters from the UK and even outside of the UK now that he can build into stars with the help of Sky televising their fights. Hearn is very careful in how he matches his fighters, so they don’t lose too often. For instance, look at the guys that Bellew has been matched up with since his loss to Adonis Stevenson three years ago. Bellew moved up to cruiserweight, but he’s not been matched against the really good fighters in that division in my view such as Oleksandr Usyk, Krzysztof Glowacki, Marco Huck, Mairis Briedis, Murat Gassiev, Denis Lebedev and Beibut Shumenov. Why hasn’t Hearn matched Bellew against any of those guys? I don’t know.
You have to wonder why Hearn didn’t match Bellew against those fighters, because how do you not put him in with at least one of them if you’re serious about wanting to make him a star in that division. I think Bellew would lose to all of those top cruiserweights, especially Usyk. That would be a mismatch in my view. With the way that Hearn matches his fighters, they’re not going to lose too often. Look at Hearn’s new fighter heavyweight Luis Ortiz. Instead of matching Ortiz against some talented heavyweights with a chance to beat him, Hearn puts Ortiz in with Malik Scott and Dave Allen. Ortiz can fight until he’s an old man and never lose with that kind of match-making by Hearn.
Hearn complained afterwards to skysports.com about Haye:
“He’s a control freak, so he likes to deal with everything himself and the contract – some of the demands in there as Tony was talking about – were outrageous,” said Hearn. “But we gave into them, because Tony doesn’t care about who walks first, what dressing room he’s in, who wears what gloves, how thick the underlay is. He just wants the fight. It really hurts David that he can’t have full control. I’ve never seen him like that. His legs were going and of course when you saw him in the head-to-head after, he had completely lost his marbles by then.”
Frankly, I think Hearn should be happy that Haye is even bothering to fight Bellew, because if this fight wasn’t happening, he would likely be forced to defend his WBC title against his #1 mandatory challenger Mairis Briedis. That’s not a big money fight for Bellew, and it’s one that he has a very, very good chance of losing by a knockout. I don’t know of any other heavyweights that Hearn could stick in the ring with Bellew for a circus-like fight.
I think there would be a lot of angry boxing fans if Hearn matched Bellew against IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua in a Matchroom Sport in house fight. I won’t be surprised if that fight happens in the future regardless of the outcome of the Bellew vs. Haye fight. I think Hearn will end up sticking Joshua and Bellew in the ring together, because it would play big in the UK. Outside of the UK, the boxing world would likely be put off by a Joshua-Bellew fight, because they know Bellew form his knockout loss to Adonis Stevenson. They wouldn’t see it as a high quality match-up. My guess is Hearn will match Bellew against Joshua in 2018 unless Bellew gets knocked out by both Haye and Briedis. At that point, I would be forlorn if Hearn tried to sell a fight between Bellew and Joshua or have it on regular Sky. It would be a monstrously bad fight, but I can still see Hearn making it.
As far as the Haye-Bellew fight, I don’t know why Hearn is going on still about the negotiations with Haye. It’s done with. Why is he still talking about that nonsense? The main thing is Hearn got the fight for Bellew against a well-known British heavyweight, and now the fans are going to enjoy the spectacle that comes from it.
After Bellew gets knocked out in the 1st round by Haye, which is my prediction, Hearn can come clean up with the damage control by giving his best reasons for why his fighter Bellew lost. I just we don’t hear excuses from Hearn like we did after his fighter welterweight Kell Brook lost to middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin by a 5th round knockout last September.
Hearn was going on about how Brook had an injured eye and how he moved up in weight. Hearn even said that Brook was winning the fight on the judges’ scorecards at the time of the stoppage. Come on, your fighter Brook was stopped, and you’re talking about how he was winning the fight? Just so you know, Brook was not winning the fight on my scorecards. He won just round 2, and lost all the rest of the rounds. The scoring of the fight was comical in my view. It was just sad.
Anyway, I hope Hearn doesn’t start with the excuses if/when Bellew loses to Haye on March 4. Hearn just needs to admit that Bellew didn’t have the talent to win the fight. If the World Boxing Council doesn’t strip Bellew of his cruiserweight title after that fight, then Bellew needs to do the right thing and match him against his mandatory challenger Mairis Briedis, because he’s been waiting for his title shot patiently. If Bellew wants to call himself the WBC cruiserweight champion, then he needs to be facing his mandatory challengers rather than fighting outside of the division against heavyweights.
