Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn talks to Fight Hype about the outcome of Tszyu vs Fundora on an economic level and expresses his realization that some entities in boxing are just too stubborn to put their egos to the side in order to do business.
Hearn also doesn’t miss the opportunity to poke a little fun at Leonard Ellerbe for having a history of belittling DAZN when now all of the major fights are happening on that platform. Check out some of what Hearn had to say below.
Hearn on his prediction of Tszyu vs Fundora doing about 10-15k PPV buys and if that proved to be true
“As I understand it, less than 20,000 but who knows. A lot of people reported that Haney vs Prograis did 60,000, which is incorrect…(Leonard Ellerbe) said ‘they did a show that lost millions of dollars.’ We didn’t lose any money from that fight actually. It was actually quite a success. What I can tell you is that Haney vs Prograis did between four and five times more than Tszyu against Fundora. So in that respect it was quite successful.
“But by the way, Tszyu vs Fundora was a great show, so it’s not ‘oh, Eddie said this,’ I congratulate you, it just wasn’t a PPV. That’s all. And you would’ve seen that and it’s going to take a lot of work.
“Look, how long did Leonard Ellerbe abuse DAZN about being an app? Number one, Leonard Ellerbe’s friend, Mr. Haymon, his next show is on DAZN, Canelo against Munguia. They actually need that platform. Number two, as media reports suggest, PBC representatives had conversations to try and get on DAZN. Who knows. Also, tell me what major fight coming up around the world that’s already been schedule in the next three, four, five, six, seven months that’s not on DAZN.
“I don’t actually know what Leonard’s role is in all this stuff. Is he still CEO of Mayweather Promotions? I don’t know what they do, and I don’t know what fighters they are…I actually have no problem with Leonard. I think all these people are great for boxing…but when he says something, I don’t get offended. I just respond. But when I say something he loses his mind.
“In boxing what I’ve learned is that some people will put ego to the side to do business, some won’t. The reality is that PBC and Al Haymon really don’t want to do business with anyone. They don’t want to match their fighters with any other stable, I think we’ve established that…I’ve never even been able to have a conversation with doing a fight with PBC, which is weird really because now that they don’t have any shows other than a handful of PPV shows on Amazon, we should actually be doing those shared platform events where we could do massive fights where I could get their fighters out, we could do it on Amazon, we could do it on DAZN.
“You have to remember that just because you have a big platform that doesn’t mean people are going to buy a PPV.”