By Rameez Haider: After my most recent article surrounding Anthony Joshua, I have had a fair few tweets surrounding comments I made about Eddie Hearn and the job he is doing with British boxing.
A lot of people have jumped onto the band wagon after David Haye’s verbal assault on Eddie Hearn and his style of promotion. I want to apologize in advance to any readers from the other side of the pond who may not find this article very relevant but it is something I wanted to address.
I think it is firstly important to understand this article is about Eddie Hearn the promoter, not the individual. It is easy for us to criticize people in the media without actually having any idea about who they are in their private lives. Floyd Mayweather is a great example, for all his brashness and persona he shows in front of the camera, behind all the lights he is someone who dedicates a lot of time and money to people who are less fortunate.
As a promoter, you only have to look back at the state of boxing before Eddie Hearn came along to see the kind of job he has done. After the end of fighters like Prince Naseem Hamed etc. British boxing was nowhere to be seen. Terrestrial TV had given up on it, public interest had all but disappeared and generally speaking all the big talking fights were mainly in America.
Eddie Hearn came along and put together a deal with Sky to become their sole representative on the channel.
Since then you only have to look at the careers that Sky have followed whether the fighters are still with Matchroom or not. AJ, Dillian Whyte, Tony Bellew, Nathan Cleverley, Scott Quigg, Carl Frampton, James Degale, Kell Brook, Darren Barker, George Groves, Carl Froch, Anthony Crolla, Callum Smith and brothers (minus Liam), Kal Yafai, Ricky Burns, Lee Selby, Eubank Jr etc. These are all boxers who have massively contributed to bringing British boxing to the fore. The platform Eddie Hearn and Matchroom have given these boxers is phenomenal. All these guys are practically celebrities now and would get stopped in the street by casual fans and needless to say they have all made a fair few pounds as well from fights, endorsements etc.
What is also important to note is the type of exposure less well known fighters get. Whether it is upcoming boxers like Connor Benn and O’hara Davies, or if it is the domestic level fighters like your Coyles and Tyrone Nurses of this world. Thanks to Matchroom and Eddie Hearn domestic level fighters are a lot better known and supported in the U.K. than anywhere else in my opinion. Young fighters are fighting in front of 15/20000 people gaining huge experience and exposure.
Then you look at the business model that he has created with Sky, if Eddie Hearn is such a bad promoter and all the rest, why is ITV coming back with pay per view boxing? All this has stemmed from people seeing the unbelievable success of boxing on Sky which is down to Eddie Hearn and Matchroom.
You only have to look at the events to see what great nights they are. I was at the AJ fight this Saturday gone and the atmosphere was unbelievable, 21,000 fans to watch the boxing, from all ages, men and women. It takes a super fight in America to get this type of atmosphere yet in the UK, Anthony Crolla sold out the MEN Arena. That is not being disrespectful to America or Anthony Crolla; it’s just being honest.
Eddie Hearn is active on social media and does honest and open interviews with the likes of IFL TV where he keeps the fans informed every step of the way. Does he like the limelight, yes, does he talk too much at times, yes, and can he be at times annoying for a lot of people, absolutely. But then ask yourself this, what is the job of a promoter? To promote the event to its maximum, ensuring maximum revenues and interest. How do you go about doing this? By selling the product on offer which he does extremely well. You have to talk things up, you have to cause a bit of controversy to get people talking, it is what sells.
When Carl Frampton fought Scott Quigg, one of the big sub plots to the fight was the Eddie Hearn Frampton arguments. When the press conference was in Dublin, Eddie Hearn got absolutely pelted but the question is, did it drum up more casual interest in the fight? 100 percent it did. Even now David Haye vs. Tony Bellew, people are talking about the Haye and Hearn beef and that has further drummed up the interest in the fight. So as a promoter is he doing his job? Of course he is, he has to be, he has changed the shape of boxing in the U.K. making it probably the second most popular sport behind the football. He has his competitors trying to replicate the business model they have. The U.S. promoters and Networks all want to do collaborations with Matchroom, from Golden Boy to Mayweather Promotions to Showtime etc. Gosh, even Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz left Golden Boy to join Matchroom, what does that tell you about the job Eddie Hearn is doing.
But the biggest and most important thing is the fighters, who entrust their whole career to their promoters. Why it is that nearly all the biggest fighters join Matchroom? If he is such a bad promoter, and doesn’t pay his boxers etc. etc. then why are they all still with Matchroom.
I can understand that he may not be everyone’s cup of tea as a person, but we all have people who don’t like us. But how can you knock the man as a promoter after how he has shaped boxing in the UK?
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