Warrington signs with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom to fight on DAZN and Sky Sports

By Boxing News - 02/12/2020 - Comments

By Tim Royner: Josh Warrington has just signed a deal to return to his old promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom to fight on DAZN and Sky Sports. Earlier today, the IBF featherweight champion Warrington (30-0, 7 KOs) parted ways with his promoter Frank Warren of Queensbury Promotions in the UK.

As the saying goes, ‘The rich get richer.” Hearn has quickly built up one of the biggest stables of fighters in the sport of boxing, and Warrington is just one more piece to the giant puzzle that that Matchroom has. They’ve already got Anthony Joshua, Gennady Golovkin, and Devin Haney on their team.

It’s now back to Matchroom for the Leeds fighter Warrington, who is expected to fight on the April 18th undercard headlined by heavyweights Dillian Whyte vs. Alexander Povetkin at the O2 Arena in London. There’s no word yet who Warrington will be defending against, but it won’t likely be the unification fight that he was hoping for against WBO champion Shakur Stevenson (13-0, 7 KOs).

This took a lot of fans by surprise, as they thought Warrington, 29, was doing well with Queensbury. With them, Warrington had captured the IBF 126-lb title, and defended the belt three times successfully.

Matchroom boss Hearn could find it difficult to set-up a fight with the Top Rank promoted Stevenson, as now they’ll be dealing with 2 separate platforms in the U.S. Stevenson fights on ESPN, where Warrington will now be competing on DAZN in the States. It could be a BIG problem trying to set that fight up.

β€œIt’s great to be back with Matchroom, Sky and now DAZN and I’m very excited about the future,” said Warrington. β€œI have enjoyed my time at BT but now I’m looking forward to going on to achieve my dreams of both fighting in the USA and unifying the division.”

A logical fight for Hearn to make is to set-up a rematch between Warrington and Kid Galahad (27-1, 16 KOs), who he promotes. Galahad lost a close 12 round split decision to Warrington last June in Leeds.

A lot of fans think Galahad was given a raw deal in losing that fight, and now he’s in the position to get a rematch. Last weekend, Galahad looked incredible in stopping Claudio Marrero in the 8th round in an IBF featherweight title eliminator in Sheffield, England. Galahad was part of the Kell Brook vs. Mark DeLuca card on DAZN.

Warrington is popular in Leeds, but he’s not a huge star even in his own country. Hearn has Warrington back with him, but whether this will lead to long lasting success will depend on how well Josh does when matched against the best.

There’s a better than average chance that Warrington loses his rematch with Galahad. Once that happens, Hearn will have an ex-champon with little punching power, and arguably dim hopes for the future.

If Warrington loses his IBF title, he could find it difficult to win another world title at featherweight. He doesn’t punch hard enough, and the division is stocked with younger guys that have talent. Warrington lucked in the first place in taking the IBF title off the weight drained Lee Selby in 2018. After that, Warrington beat another weight drained fighter in Carl Frampton in 2018, and he’s not faced anyone that has a lot of talent and that isn’t drained at 126.