Eddie Hearn justifies his pay-per-view shows

Eddie Hearn with Nathan Cleverly and Tony Bellew

IN this week’s Boxing News we put your questions to Matchroom Boxing boss Eddie Hearn over six gripping pages, and his answers include this justification for their pay-per-view events.

What merits a pay-per-view (PPV) fight, because the ones you [Matchroom] put on are incredibly random?
Stuart Massie, Facebook
I think the great debate about PPV is so overhyped. We are now in October and there have been two PPVs [on Sky Sports Box Office] this year. One was Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao in May, and the other was our May 30 card where if youโ€™re telling me you didnโ€™t get value for money that night, well, quite frankly, I donโ€™t believe you. Every now and again we get a chance to put a show on and create fights that cannot be made without PPV.
When you look at the May 30 card there is no way I could ever have brought Jorge Linares over to fight Kevin Mitchell on a normal Saturday night Fight Night. There is no way
I could have brought Evengy Gradovich over to fight Lee Selby, so add those to Anthony Joshua-Kevin Johnson, and Kell Brook-Frankie Gavin and, for me, that is 100 per cent a PPV card. But in answer to what is a PPV fight? The numbers will tell you. The Tony Bellew-Nathan Cleverly rematch [November 2014] did more buys than Carl Froch-Mikkel Kessler II
[May 2013], but it also had on the card [James] DeGale, [Scott] Quigg, Joshua. All I know is, that the fights Iโ€™ve put on PPV, I could not, in a million years, put all those fights on a normal Saturday Fight Night.

TO READ THE FULL INTERVIEW, INCLUDING HEARN’S VIEWS ON BOXNATION, AL HAYMON AND KELL BROOK’S OPPONENTS, DOWNLOAD THE LATEST EDITION OF BOXING NEWS MAGAZINE HERE

Share Page