EDDIE HEARN CHRONICLES, PART IV
MY travelling schedule is brutal.
Yet I still love what I do. I have said multiple times that when I lose passion for what I do, for promoting, then I’m out. It might happen in a year, it could be 10 years. I can’t put a time frame on it, at least not yet.
I still have that passion today, very much so. But things have changed. There’s more at stake. There is more pressure. So that might mean I don’t do this for much longer. The other possibility, and this is the more likely because I’m a bit of a sick f**ker like that, it could make me even worse.
Honestly? I don’t want to do this forever. I want to spend more time with my kids. You’re sacrificing so much of that family time and the only thing that fears me is living in regret. So, if I was to finish my career and go, ‘F**king hell, I wasn’t really around that much for the kids…’, I don’t want to do that.
My kids understand. I’ve been through what they’ve been through with my dad. I don’t hold any grudges to him – but he wasn’t around. I had to travel with him just so I could see him. But it never affected me, not really. My kids are used to it now but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about it.
This is the worst business in the world. The world. You have to sleep with one eye open every night. People are trying f**k you. Fighters could be leaving. Broadcasters might be up to this and that.
But it’s an addiction, it’s a game you have to win. It’s an addiction. Boxing is an addiction. We’re all addicted to it and I often wonder what I’ll do with myself when I do manage to give it up.
My dad left boxing. He went to a happier place with no aggravation. The darts. But he had a heart attack at the age of 48. His dad died at the age of 45 and his dad died at the age of 44. So it’s looking good for me.
I am regularly tested. I run three times a week. I’m a big lump but I can run. I try to keep as fit as I can and I have to. There should be no excuse for me not to go running or go to the gym. Too busy? Then set your alarm an hour earlier. But then my alarm goes off at 5 or 6 and I’m knackered. Knackered.
But what scares me more than anything is what the business of boxing, especially the business of promoting, does to you. It makes you bitter. I look at the older promoters and they are bitter as f**k. And I don’t blame them one bit. I don’t think they’re horrible people, it’s the game. They’ve been f**ked so many times. They’ve been cheated on so many times.
I’m not there yet. I have always wished for people’s success. Unlike my rival promoters, I do not hope my rival promoters’ shows fail. But I worry that I will be like that if I stay in the sport too long.
I honestly think, one day, I will go – done. I’m out.
THIS WAS THE LAST IN A FOUR-PART SERIES
PART I: ‘I didn’t know what the f**k I was doing!’
PART II: ‘How I persuaded Sky Sports to make me their sole promoter’
