Eddie Hearn grew up thinking he was “a hard nut”. He failed to make it into the sixth form at private school after flunking his GCSEs. Twenty years later, though, he heads Matchroom Sport, the business his father Barry started, as it aims to become a billion pound business.
Hearn – engaged in a scramble to find a new opponent for heavyweight boxing star Anthony Joshua, whose proposed opponent tested positive for banned substances – takes his responsibilities to the business seriously. “I’ll give my life for it,” he told Telegraph Sport.
It is Joshua’s American debut on June 1 and at Madison Square Garden, scene of some of the great heavyweight battles. And Hearn’s broadcast allies, the multi-sport streaming platform DAZN, have a deal with the promoter worth one billion dollars over the next eight years.
Hearn, with a gift of the gab, an encyclopaedic knowledge of the business, and a growing ability to troubleshoot, will announce Jarrell Miller’s replacement on Monday. It is believed to be the American Michael Hunter – who has a record of 16-1 – although it is understood that Team Joshua’s pick was the former world title challenger Luis Ortiz. Talks were ongoing over the weekend with Hunter, Ortiz, Kubrat Pulev, Manuel Charr and Andy Ruiz, who were all being considered.
“Fighters say they are prepared to die in the ring, I’m prepared to die for the family business.” admits Hearn, a workaholic with commitments on both sides of The Pond. He has to be, with a long-term deal with Sky Sports in the UK and that ‘billion dollar’ arrangement with DAZN in the USA.
“I’m loving it and I live it and it’s everything to me. I’m not an overthinker. I always joke with my missus, I’m a very simple man. I go to work and go home, see the kids and go to sleep. Then I get up and go to work. The problem now is the time zones,” admitted Hearn. “I get about three to four hours sleep a night.”
Hearn is reading ‘Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t’, a management book by Jim C. Collins. “If you follow the growth of Matchroom Sport in the last five years, you realise it’s gone from a good company to a great business. It’s about the transition and a balance. My dad built Matchroom out of a snooker centre in Romford. A dingy office he found and blagged his way into. He spent years and years just trying to break even. Now we’re in a situation where we’re one of the biggest players in sports rights and global events.
“And that’s one of the challenges for me, to take the business from this old geezer Barry Hearn who is a right wheeler dealer to a global business that has reputations in multiple territories. The trial for me is outperforming my dad. I’ve always been Barry Hearn’s son.
“My sister fenced for Great Britain. I played cricket and football pretty well for six or seven years. I got kicked out of Brentwood School after the fifth year. They wouldn’t let me go to sixth year. Partly because I was a brat and partly because my GSCEs weren’t that good. But they always used to let the good sportsmen stay. My dad went to the school and said ‘listen, I know his results weren’t great, but he’s in the first team for football and cricket…’ and they said: ‘We don’t care.’