Matchroom headman Eddie Hearn will be inside Dallas’ AT&T Stadium on Friday for the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul mega-event. He just won’t necessarily stay for the main event.
“Sometimes it gets me, not into trouble, but obviously it can ruffle the feathers of the MVP guys [Paul’s promotional company],” Eddie Hearn admitted to Uncrowned’s The Ariel Helwani Show.
“I’ve always been straight with people, I’ve always been honest. I’m not going to brown nose people, I’m not calling for this fight to be banned. All I’m saying is, it’s not my cup of tea.”
Hearn understands the intrigue surrounding Tyson vs. Paul, but as a self-admitted diehard boxing fan, it’s fair to say that he will not be counting down the days until the big fight, which sees a 58-year-old Tyson return to professional boxing for the first time since 2005 against the 27-year-old Paul. Several of Hearn’s well-known contemporaries have criticized the matchup or expressed doubt regarding its merits.
“I grew up around boxing since I was 7 years old,” Hearn said. “Mike Tyson was probably one of my greatest heroes in the sport. I just don’t want to see him in the ring again at 58 — that’s it. Commercially, I get it all. It’s going to do great numbers, people are going to make a lot of money. You’re not going to see me with a [picket sign] outside the arena saying, ‘Stop the fight! Stop the fight!’ But it’s just the world we live it today. And a long time ago I made the decision — it’s probably cost me a lot of money — to stay true to my passion for the sport and move away from that kind of thing. And it just doesn’t sit right with me.”
Rather than the headliners, Hearn will be in attendance Friday for the co-main event, watching his fighter Katie Taylor defend her undisputed super lightweight titles in a rematch with Amanda Serrano.
Taylor turned professional with Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing in 2016 and is one of Hearn’s biggest stars alongside former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua, whose future remains unclear after it was revealed earlier this month that he will be unavailable for a Daniel Dubois rematch on Feb. 22.
“He will either fight Daniel Dubois or Tyson Fury.” Hearn said regarding Joshua’s next fight, “There the only two fights I see. He wanted to go ahead on February 22 and fight Daniel Dubois, and he just wouldn’t have been 100 percent. He’s still got a couple of minor niggles from the fight. He can’t start camp yet, and he needs to now if he’s going to fight February 22.”
Dubois is instead expected to face an alternate opponent on that date. According to Hearn, Dubois and Joshua could then rematch in the summer of 2025.
“You’re going to see him around May or June time,” Hearn said of Joshua, “And he’s desperate to rematch Daniel Dubois. But obviously, Tyson Fury, win or lose (against Oleksandr Usyk) on Dec. 21, it’s going to be a fight that is going to be very difficult to remove yourself from. Those two have to meet before it’s all over. And that could be next.”
Joshua and Fury have seemingly been destined to fight for almost a decade, but between both fighters taking losses and Fury’s two-year hiatus from the sport, it’s begun to feel as if the all-British clash won’t ever happen. However, both boxers’ promoters, Hearn and Frank Warren, have insisted that Fury and Joshua will share the ring before both hang up the gloves, even if it ends up being their final fights ever.
“If [Fury beats Usyk], absolutely fantastic. He could defend his unified world championship against Anthony Joshua,” Hearn said. “If he loses, it’s the last dance for both. Either way, it’s compelling. But I want Fury to win. I want Fury to be world heavyweight champion because that’s what AJ wants, is to try and become a three-time world heavyweight champion. That’s why he wants to rematch Dubois, because there is a shot at the world title there. So if Fury can win (on Dec. 21) and we can make the AJ fight, that will definitely be my preferred route. But we’ll see what happens.”
Hearn was in Philadelphia this past Saturday promoting two more of his flagship fighters, Jaron “Boots” Ennis and Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez. And the results of their bouts were polar opposites: “Boots” won a decision over Karen Chukhadzhian in unimpressive fashion, while “Bam” looked flawless, spectacularly knocking out Pedro Guevara.
“I thought it was a decent performance, definitely not spectacular.” Hearn confessed about Ennis. “The issue with this IBF mandatory was, it was a fight that quite honestly no one really wanted. We had to take the fight or lose our belt, and the first fight wasn’t very good between the two, wasn’t very exciting. And actually, it was a pretty good fight on Saturday. But ‘Boots’ seemed to be more focused on trying to make the fight more exciting for the fans, and in turn, got hit probably a little bit more than he should do.
“Not a performance that I wanted to scream and shout from the turnbuckle from, but definitely a performance that might make it a little bit easier to match him [up], and we’ve seen that over the last couple of days as well. I think a solid performance but not spectacular, and he will have to be better.”
There are two paths Ennis could take for his next fight: Either chase a welterweight unification, or leave the division and move up to super welterweight for a big fight there. Golden Boy’s Oscar De La Hoya already welcomed an Ennis vs. Vergil Ortiz Jr. fight on social media, and Hearn divulged in Saturday’s post-fight press conference that the interest from the Eimantas Stanionis and PBC side for an Ennis unification bout has increased since the underwhelming performance against Chukhadzhian.
“I know this time around it was a bit tougher for him at 147 (pounds).” Hearn said of Ennis’ weight cut, “Something we’ve got to look at. We want him to unify, but at the same time if he has to move to ’54 — there’s been talks with [Turki Alalshikh] and of course Oscar, you’ve heard him chime in about the Vergil Ortiz fight. I think that’s a tremendous fight and we’d love to make that fight. It will either be a unification or a big fight at 154 next. [Ennis] will have to be better if he’s fighting that kind of level of opposition.”
Hearn also responded in the affirmative when asked if “Boots” will ever share the ring with pound-for-pound star Terence Crawford. “I think it’s very likely that ‘Boots’ will fight Vergil Ortiz next,” Hearn said. “If he beats Vergil Ortiz, which I believe he does, then His Excellency [Alalshikh] will push to make ‘Boots’ against Crawford. You see, Terence Crawford really knows his boxing and he knows how difficult that fight is with ‘Boots,’ so he’ll want financial rewarding. So when that fight becomes big enough, I actually think it will happen.
“But until then, he’s going to have to put in better performances against better opposition to earn the right to have that big money fight against Terence Crawford.”
Rodriguez was on Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show” this past week and said he doesn’t see a Naoya Inoue clash forthcoming in his near future because he’s still fighting at 115 pounds, while Inoue has become undisputed champion two division above and could move up to featherweight as soon as 2025. But Rodriguez’s promoter, Hearn, thinks an Inoue vs. Rodriguez fight will come sooner than “Bam” may think.
“I look at ‘Bam’ and I really feel like he’s not going to be at super flyweight that long,” Hearn said. “He’s 24 years of age. You go in, [Guevera’s] a former world champion. He’s just had a big win in Australia against Moloney, he’s a very good fighter. And ‘Bam’ destroyed him. For me, I think you’re looking at the pound-for-pound No. 1 in the sport over the next few years. I think he’s going to be there consistently.
“The only thing that’s going to beat ‘Bam’ [in my opinion] is going too far through the divisions. You see that quite a lot. And obviously, the Inoue fight at super [bantamweight] is a huge step up against a fantastic pound-for-pound fighter. What’s going to happen is ‘Bam’ wants to try and unify. You’ve got the ‘Chocolatito’ (Roman Gonzalez) fight out there. And where are the next challenges [coming] from?
“The next challenge will be to move to bantamweight, try and win a third division world title, and then you’re one division away from Naoya Inoue,” Hearn continued. “If he chooses to stay at 122 pounds, that fight becomes a real big reality.”
Inoue, 31, sits within the top three of most fans’ and pundits’ pound-for-pound lists, while Rodriguez, 24, sits somewhere in the middle of the top ten. With their respective ages compared to the rest of the top echelon list, it is feasible that the two could be the best boxers in the world if they meet in a few years.
“That’s going to be one vs. two pound-for-pound matchup,” Hearn said. “It’s just an unbelievable fight.”
