Arum: DAZN Should Get Rid Of Hearn; Doesn't Belong Here
LAS VEGAS – Bob Arum claims he couldn’t care less about what Eddie Hearn says about the Tyson Fury-Otto Wallin show Arum’s company is promoting this week.
Hearn said at one point this week that Arum’s Top Rank Inc. had sold only 1,500 tickets for a card that’ll be held Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena, which can accommodate slightly more than 20,000 fans for boxing. Arum contends Hearn is incorrect, and that the British promoter should spend more time pumping up his own company’s card Friday night in The Theater at Madison Square Garden.
Matchroom Boxing’s show at The Theater will feature undefeated lightweight contender Devin Haney versus Zaur Abdullaev in the main event for the WBC’s interim 135-pound championship. DAZN, the emerging streaming service with which Hearn’s company has a contract to provide dozens of shows per year, will stream the Haney-Abdullaev card (7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT).
The Fury-Wallin show will be streamed by ESPN+ on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m. PT) because Top Rank has an exclusive content deal with ESPN. If Hearn wants to continue trashing Top Rank’s card because England’s Fury (28-0-1, 20 KOs) is a massive favorite over the unbeaten but unknown Wallin (20-0, 13 KOs, 1 NC), that’s fine by Arum.
“I’m an experienced promoter and I would never, ever refer to any fight that Hearn is putting on, because I’m not gonna publicize another promoter’s fights,” Arum told BoxingScene.com. “All he does is talk about my fights. You know, ‘Unwatchable, Tyson Fury-Wallin.’ Well, if he said that after the fight, then maybe that’s not so good for me because I can’t do any more business, right? But if he says it before, hey, say it a few times. He’s publicizing my fight.”
The 87-year-old Arum, an International Boxing Hall of Fame inductee who has been involved in the sport for parts of six decades, then blasted England’s Hearn for what Arum considers a poor track record of promoting cards in the United States since the launch of Matchroom Boxing USA late in 2017.
“Eddie Hearn doesn’t belong in the United States, promoting fights,” Arum said. “He doesn’t understand this market. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. All he can do is write checks, and stupid checks. Look what he paid me for [Jose] Ramirez to go over for one fight to DAZN and knock out [Maurice] Hooker. I mean, that’s madness, total madness. And that didn’t do any kind of numbers. The only traction that they’ve had on this DAZN, in the United States, is Canelo. Canelo has done extraordinarily well for them, extraordinarily well. But he’s the only one.
“And really, they would be better off, in my opinion, if they got rid of Hearn and turned over a lot of the DAZN business to Oscar [De La Hoya], whose fights have been out-performing Eddie’s on DAZN, and get guys like [Lou] DiBella involved. I mean, Eddie Hearn doesn’t belong here – he doesn’t. He says the wrong thing. He does the wrong thing. You know, you’re promoting Devin Haney in Madison Square Garden. Talk about f*cking Haney. There are plenty of things to say about Haney. He may be a great fighter. We don’t know yet, but so far, so good.”
Hearn, 40, is the son of Barry Hearn, who began promoting boxing in England in 1987.
Under the younger Hearn’s direction, the company has helped build former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua into a superstar in the United Kingdom. Matchroom also works with Demetrius Andrade, Kell Brook, Tevin Farmer, Gennadiy Golovkin, Haney, Hooker, Daniel Jacobs, Billy Joe Saunders, Callum Smith, Katie Taylor, Oleksandr Usyk, Jessie Vargas and Dillian Whyte, among others.
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