Hall of Famer and CEO of Top Rank Bob Arum is clearly not impressed with the new kid on the block – Eddie Hearn. The Englishman is trying to conquer the US boxing landscape via the new streaming service DAZN, but his methods and obviously his fighters won’t do him any favor, Bob Arum believes.
Bob Arum admits he killed Pacquiao-Crawford fight, didn’t want to see Manny take damage https://t.co/H1PQYQVKEi pic.twitter.com/6pxy8UG95a
— Bad Left Hook (@badlefthook) January 29, 2019
“Eddie Hearn is an okay guy but he’s too full of himself to really be effective,” Arum told World Boxing News in an exclusive interview.
DAZN has him doing events in the U.S. Everybody looking at it knows that it’s a mash. He’s spending money on these ridiculous programmes on DAZN that nobody cares about.
He’s spending more money on these shows than Haymon is on PBC. Or even what we’re doing on ESPN. (The difference is) We both understand the U.S market, which Hearn doesn’t. DAZN itself would be much better advised having fights other than Canelo, which will get a lot of attention. They would be much better off, DAZN turning over their domestic programming in the US to Oscar’s Golden Boy.
At least Oscar knows the market, particularly the Hispanic market. Eddie doesn’t have a clue.
For example, he did a fight in Philadelphia on a Friday night. There wasn’t much attendance. One of the reasons is, they sold all of the tickets out of the UK when the fight was in Philadelphia. That type of activity showed that it couldn’t work when the revolutionary war was fought with George Washington fighting the Brits.
You don’t run a promotion in the U.S from the UK and have all the tickets come out of the UK. It makes no sense. It wouldn’t make sense if we did a fight with Frank Warren in the UK and controlled everything from the US,” the 87-year-old said.
