Eddie Hearn On Fury v Joshua Collapse: “I Was A Little Bit Naive”

Eddie Hearn feels he trusted the wrong people

Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn, Bob Arum and Frank Warren pose at the Fury vs Schwarz fight
Eddie Hearn (left), Bob Arum and Frank Warren

Eddie Hearn feels he trusted the wrong people


When former WBC Heavyweight champion Deontay “The Bronze Bomber” Wilder won the arbitration case, it took the air out of the balloon for the boxings fans that believed we were on the verge of getting an undisputed heavyweight champion. Both teams of unified champion Anthony “AJ” Joshua, and WBC champion Tyson “The Gypsy King” Fury supposedly were scrambling hard to make the biggest fight in boxing. DAZN/Matchroom boxing promoter Eddie Hearn felt the pain of disappointment harder than anyone. After all the hard work and day-to-day updates only to have this fight pulled out his clutches was, in his words, “a shock to the system.”

During an interview with Behind the Gloves, Hearn revealed that maybe he trusted the wrong people.

“We put all our eggs in that one basket (the undisputed fight with Fury). Maybe I was a little bit naïve to trust people in the game; trust their word and believe everybody was on the same page in trying to make the biggest fight in boxing. Silly me!”

THE SIGNS KEPT COMING

Hearn admitted that he knew of the arbitration. However, he was told not to worry, and that it was not going to be a factor in preventing the fight from happening. Looking back at things now, he probably should have seen it coming when both of Fury’s promoters for the fight, Top Rank’s Bob Arum and Queensbury Promotions’ Frank Warren, had negative comments about the fight happening.

“When you look back, and you realize the negativity from day one from their side of saying it won’t happen in the summer, no one will put the money up, and they won’t get a site deal, obviously, once we kept ticking all those boxes, they had to do something.”

Like him or not, Hearn has a valid point. Whenever he would come out with positive news about the fight, his counterparts were not on the same page. Arum is on record saying the fight was dead in the water. Warren was very vocal in saying how he will believe it when they get in the ring. So there was that aura of doubt looming over the fight from the two other promoters.

The British promoter wants fans to understand which team was trying to make the fight.

“You have to be quite thick if you don’t realize the one team that was trying to make this fight and the one team that wasn’t.”

By: Garrisson Bland

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Garrisson Bland - Head of Public Relations/Senior Journalist. Garrisson is the Head of Public relations for 3kingsboxing.com as well as a senior writer. He is also the host of YouTube boxing show "Truth And Facts Sports Talk."