Emperors of the televised fight game tell Telegraph Sport about the business of match-making in the current climate
The fight business has been described as ‘akin to the Wild West of sport’ without seasonal schedules and involving promoters, television companies, venues and fighters in a complex juggling act, so right now, how are promoters running a boxing empire without boxing ?
Three of the worlds leading boxing promoters – Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren in the UK and Bob Arum in America, all holed up at home – spoke exclusively to The Daily Telegraph outlining how they maintain their businesses as they collectively oversee the careers of the likes of Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury, Vasyl Lomanchenko, Terence Crawford, Olyksandr Usyk, Daniel Dubois and others.
Eddie Hearn, head of Matchroom Boxing, told Telegraph Sport: “There’s two ways to look at it. The first is that this is a very important moment in our country’s history, for our families and our lives. That has to take priority. But at the same time, anyone who runs a business or has major ambitions knows you can’t stop working. This thing will leave one hell of a mess once it sails through, and it will sail through. The economy will recover, but it’ll take a huge amount of time. Some business won’t recover and some sport won’t recover. Some people won’t recover, which is much more important. It’s difficult in this type of environment to even talk about this. But we’re going to get to see who is prepared and who is not. Who is running a proper business. Who will survive…”
Indeed, that was taken to the extreme when mixed martial arts promoters the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), were preparing to put an event on in the USA on April 18 outside federal jurisdiction at a Native American resort in California, behind closed doors before high ranking executives from their broadcast partners ESPN/Disney insisted they pull the plug on it. Boxing promoters, however, have happily followed clear governmental guidelines. Hall of fame promoter Frank Warren takes a similar view to Hearn.
“You’ve got to take it day by day. I have no idea what’s going to happen, because no one knows. Fighters need a date to train towards, and all they can do is tick over. It’s pointless Tyson Fury focusing on a date to fight Deontay Wilder. He’s got no date to aim for. As soon as the Government says we can put on events, then we can lock down dates for the backlog.”
Warren, Arum and Hearn, collectively, will have postponed around twenty-five fight nights in this period, the revenue from which will run into hundreds of millions. They are all creating content, new and old, digging into the fight archives for sports broadcasters. It also means being creative with podcasts, fitness shows, even recipe shows, explained Hearn.
“Right now all the sports broadcasters are desperate for content. One thing we can’t provide is live sporting content,” explained the promoter who has a deal with Sky Sports in the UK and DAZN in the USA. “We can provide archive fights. But our bread and butter is live events. Right now we don’t know if we’re coming back in June or September. We can only get dates ready, ask the fighters to be prepared. Keep speaking to the broadcasters, keep schedules in place. It might be another four weeks or six weeks in isolation. There is going to be such a huge backlog of fighters and shows once this is over. And it might take time to get the trust factor back that people will want to be in an environment of 60,000 people again.”
Could the promoters put events on behind closed doors ? “I don’t think we can even plan that until we know what the position is,” explained Warren, who had just come off the phone to Fury. “But it may be the way back to start with. It’s a situation that is fluid. We’re in the hands of scientists at the moment.”
Then there is the mental health of fighters, people who are naturally kinetic, who thrive daily in the gym.
“They’ve got to keep themselves well,” added Warren. “They can do their road work, keep their weight down. But it’s the same for everybody. The whole population is affected by this. No one is getting it worse. The worst thing is if you have no money and can’t put food on the table.”
The advice to fighters is simple, says Warren. “The advice is to stay safe, but also stay ready.”
Bob Arum, holed up in his Beverley Hills home in Los Angeles, with his Top Rank Inc offices closed in ghost town Las Vegas, told Telegraph Sport.
“I’m isolated, but I’m following everything. Your PM Boris Johnson did the right thing, our moron Trump wanted everyone back in work by Easter. He’s crazy. This thing is spreading out of control, what we should do is double down and get more equipment. About five times a day I say to myself this is why you never wanted to retire,” explained the 88-year-old who promoted Muhammad Ali, Manny Pacquiao and now oversees Tyson Fury’s career alongside Warren.
“This is like retirement and it’s f—– terrible. You can’t really focus on anything because you don’t know when it’s going to clear up or what’s going to happen. Arum has written off seven events from mid-march to the end of April.
“This is our busiest time of year. We had three events in the month of March, four in April. This is time we’d be working every weekend doing another event. Some of them major events. We will eventually try to catch up when this clears. The answer is we’ll probably never catch up. I really feel for the athletes because they have a limited number of years in which to excel in their careers. Promoters, myself as an example, go on forever. It has a less of an impact on us. The real impact is on the athlete, not the people who put on the event. I feel really sorry for them, because these months they will never get back.”