Eddie Hearn DAZN Move: Game Changed or Game Over for Matchroom Boxing? (PART 2 OF 2)

In part one we looked at the news that Eddie Hearn's Matchroom Boxing is ending its long term broadcast deal with Sky Sports and moving to the new sports streaming service, DAZN, and comparisons between what Eddie Hearn is seemingly trying to achieve with Matching Boxing and what Dana White has already done with the UFC. While on the surface the comparison between the two combat sports, Boxing and mixed-martial-arts, might appear to be a good one, there is one huge difference that needs to be considered first: the UFC has always been much bigger than any of its MMA competitors, enjoying a state of a near-monopoly in the sport, while on the other hand Boxing has always had multiple promoters with no one company being on top without competition for very long. 

Yes, Dana White did grow the UFC into a global phenomenon by making it more mainstream, but he started with what was already by far the biggest brand in MMA and he had no real competition inside his own sport. If Eddie Hearn really wants to transform Matchroom Boxing into the Boxing equivalent of the UFC, he will have to compete with Bob Arum's Top Rank, who has his own deal with ESPN, as well as Al Haymon's Premier Boxing Champions who has a broadcast deal with both Showtime Boxing and Fox Sports. And that's only the American competitors. In the UK he will have to continue to stay ahead of Frank Warren's Queensberry Promotions partnered with BT Sport, as well as Henessy Sport on Channel 5, newcomer Boxxer on Sky Sports and Dennis Hobson's new boxing streaming service, Fightzone. For this reason a better comparison could be made between boxing and the pro-wrestling landscape of the 1970s and 1980s before Vince McMahon bought his father's wrestling company in 1982 and transformed that business forever.

 

Today the pro-wrestling landscape resembles that of MMA, with one global juggernaut being heads and solders above even the biggest of the opposition. Just as the UFC is interchangeable with MMA, similarly the WWE is interchangeable with pro-wrestling in the minds of causal fans. However, this was far from the case before McMahon took control of his father's World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), shortened in 1979  to World Wrestling Federation (WWF), and began expanding the reach of his company. Up until then the United States was divided into wrestling territories controlled by different promoters, all agreeing not to compete with one another and to even cooperate with one another by sharing talent. This situation, which had existed since at least the creation of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) in 1948, was to the benefit of most promoters; but McMahon controlled the Northeast territory which gave him an immediate advantage over other promotions, as it included the media capital of the world New York City, where all the major magazines and world's most famous arena were based. Also, cable television now gave wrestling promoters the ability to showcase their product to a nationwide audience and build a demand for their product well outside of their established territory.

Seeing the opportunity and perhaps also the potential danger of letting another promoter do it first, McMahon decided to break with tradition and began competing with his father's former business partners by expanding his company from a regional to a national promotion. McMahon would offer to buy out his rivals, if they refused, then he would put on shows inside that territory often with established talent in that territory that had jumped ship. The most famous example of McMahon acquiring stars from his rivals is nonother than the biggest wrestling superstar of the 1980s, Hulk Hogan, who before joining McMahon's WWF was the newly crowned AWA World Heavyweight Champion!   

Another successful tactic used by McMahon was buying the television time that had been used by his rivals, leaving them with no established stars and no television show to promote their wrestling cards. In addition, McMahon also sought complete control over his product. Whereas his father had worked with the various pro-wrestling magazines, McMahon Jr. created his own WWF Magazine in 1983 and withdrew ringside access for other magazines.

By the 1990s the WWF was left with only one major competitor, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) which was finally bought by McMahon in 2001. Shortly thereafter the WWF changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). The name change reminding wrestling historians that McMahon had destroyed the old wrestling business that his father had been a part of for decades and replaced it with his own brand of “sports-entertainment”.

So could Eddie Hearn do the same with boxing? 

There are obvious parallels between Vince McMahon and Eddie Hearn, both took over their companies from their fathers and were driven to achieve more than their father's did. Both also began their expansions during a time of rapid change in the broadcasting industry: cable television in the 1980s and the rise of streaming platforms today. However, Eddie Hearn is not Vince McMahon and their upbringing and the circumstances of how they succeeded their father's couldn't be more different. 

Whereas Eddie Hearn grew up in a mansion and was handed control of Matchroom Boxing by his father, Vince McMahon in contrast had to take out a loan and buy his father's company from him. Far from being a spoilt rich kid, McMahon grew up in a trailer pack in North Carolina with a series of abusive stepfathers before eventually getting a job in his real father's wrestling company in 1972. This added to the fact that a British company like Matchroom Boxing lacks the prestige in the US that the WWWF had when McMahon bought it, may be the difference maker. Time will tell.

Eddie Hearn DAZN Move: Game Changed or Game Over for Matchroom Boxing? (PART 1 OF 2)

In 2012, Eddie Hearn's Matchroom Boxing signed an exclusive television deal with British broadcaster Sky Sports. This alliance remained strong for nine years and saw domestic talent like Carl Froch, Kell Brook and Tony Bellew, as well as heavyweight stars Derek Chisora, Dillian Whyte and Anthony Joshua, all headlining special Sky Box Office events and brining what had been a declining sport back into the mainstream. But after almost a decade together, the metaphorical devoice papers were served last month (2 June, 2021) when, after months of speculation, Hearn announced that he was not extending his deal with Sky Sports and was instead signing a new five year exclusive deal with the global sports streaming service, DAZN. In a sit down interview with IFL TV Hearn explained his reasons for ending his long standing partnership with Sky Sports. According to the promoter, three major factors in his decision to make the move were financial: a bigger budget to pay bigger stars to fight on bigger cards; the global platform that DAZN operates on compared to a domestic platform like Sky Sports; and finally complete control of production:  

“Once we shared this vision and the investment was there and it enabled me to grow the sport like I wanted to; make the fights I wanted to make; build the shows like I wanted to build them, you know, control the production and, of course, be part of such a global plan and global push. This was the deal for us.”(IFL TV) 

Eddie Hearn's critics were quick to point out that the promoter owed much of his success to the popularity of unified WBA-IBF-WBO heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua, who has his own deal with Sky Sports that still has one fight left on it and may still decide to continue fighting on the Sky Sports Box Office platform. Another criticism was that Hearn's non-Joshua shows will now no longer benefit from cross promotion across the huge Sky platform, including Sky Sports News. So, is this “game-changed”, as the Matchroom marketing team keep tweeting out with every new announcement about the new DAZN deal, or, is it game-over for Matchroom Boxing and Eddie Hearn? 

 As Hearn pointed out in his interview with IFL TV, there are tremendous advantages to working with DAZN over Sky Sports. DAZN is owned by Len Blavatnik, who with his £23bn is Britain's richest person. This DAZN money has already lured pay-per-view superstar and pound-for-pound king, Canelo Alvarez, away from traditional Boxing platforms in the United States onto DAZN. So, the money does exist to get the sport's biggest stars to fight on the new platform. And the global audience of DAZN sets it apart from domestic broadcasters like Sky Sports and BT Sport in the UK, and ESPN and Fox Sports in the US. However, being global also puts the newbie in potential competition with Amazon Prime and Disney+ if these giants ever decided to put boxing on their platform. Recently, it was reported that Disney (whoown ESPN) were in talks to buy BT Sport, which could signal that they intend to have sports as part of their Disney+ streaming service in the UK. 

Hearn's insistence on having complete control of the production and his own previous comparisons with what he wants to do in boxing to what Dana White has already done in the UFC, has led fight fans to speculate that Matchroom Boxing might be seeking to become to boxing what the UFC is in Mixed-Martial-Arts (MMA), a near monopoly run by one man. Such a transformation in boxing would be welcomed by many fans as it would make super fights like Fury-Joshua easier to make, but Hearn will face massive obstacles in the boxing business that Dana White never had to contend with in MMA.

Currently in boxing there are four recognised governing bodies (WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO) each with their own world champions. In addition, there are multiple promotional companies and broadcasters in the sport. All of these factions are in direct competition with each other and only working together when it benefits all parties. Put simply boxing is organised chaos, which is why the big fights are so difficult to make when the different champions have different promoters and broadcast deals. In contrast the UFC is a juggernaut compared to even its biggest rival MMA promotion and it also sanctions its own world titles. Put simply fighters in the UFC have fewer options than their counterparts in boxing, which is why the super-fights fans want to see are easier to make, but also why UFC fighters make less money than boxers. For this reason a boxing promotional company using the UFC as a template is doomed to failure, it is simply not in the interest of the biggest stars in the sport, the rival promoters and rival broadcasters to allow it without overwhelming resistance. That at least seems to be the emerging consensus in the sport, however, in 1979, the son of a successful Professional Wrestling promoter bought his father's company and faced exactly the same challenges in transforming his company and business, proving it is possible, as we will consider in part two.

Thoughts on the Rocky Series - Mickey and Rocky

When it comes to the Rocky series, most fans of the franchise would argue that the first Rocky film is the best. Although, extensively about boxing, the reason the film resonates with a far wider audience than just boxing fans, is because the film is not really about boxing at all. Yes, Rocky is a boxer, inspired by real-life fighter, Chuck Wepner. Yes, Apollo Creed is based on Muhammad Ali. And yes, Ali had a famous fight with Chuck Wepner; where Ali was controversially knocked down by the massive underdog, and this was the inspiration for the first Rocky film. But if any fighter took half the punishment Rocky Balboa takes in the film, the fight would be stopped, hopefully. For this reason, some hardcore boxing fans, actually dislike the series. The secret behind the success of the Rocky films is that they use boxing as a metaphor for the challenges all people face at some point in their lives, and so, anybody can relate to them. 

In the first film, Rocky has just turned 30-years old. In the Seventies, this was considered the end of a fighter's prime, an age where fighters should be thinking about making enough money to retire before their skills deteriorate and they risk serious life-changing injury or worse. But Rocky, despite being considered a talented fighter, has underachieved at the only thing he ever showed promise in. Instead of fighting for championships, he is fighting "bums" in small club shows and is forced to make his living as a debt collector for the local loan shark. 

Seemingly with no family, the nearest thing Rocky has to a father figure is his trainer, Mickey; who is introduced in a scene where Rocky discovers the locker he has used for the past six years has been given away by his mentor to a younger fighter. Rocky is an underachiever, a boxing tragedy, who is seemingly too old to ever fully realize his potential now. A point that is hammered into the heads of the audience in a confrontation between Rocky and his father figure. 

Rocky asks: "I've been coming here for six years, and for six years you've been sticking it to me. I wanna know how come?"  

Mickey responds: "Okay, I'm gonna tell ya! Cause you had the talent to become a good fighter, but instead of that, you become a leg breaker to some cheap, second-rate loan shark!" 

On first viewing, it would seem that Rocky has wasted his talent, and his trainer is done with him. But a later scene changes that perception. From out of nowhere, Rocky wins the boxing equivalent of the lottery, a shot at the world heavyweight title, after no other challenger can be found at short notice. After discovering this, Mickey visits his former fighter, begging him to let the aged trainer be his manager. Rocky turns him down. Then, with his former trainer barely out of the door explodes in anger that Mickey never offered to help him more before now. It is subtlety done, but the look on the actor Burgess Meredith's face in the scene as his character Mickey listens on the stairs outside Rocky's room to the outburst, is not of anger or fear as audiences would expect, but instead intrigue and satisfaction. 

The implication of this being that when Mickey took Rocky's locker away and told the 30-year old some home truths, he hadn't given up on him at all. Instead, conscious that time was running out for his fighter, Mickey was seeing if Rocky still had the heart needed to be successful so late in his career. It was tough love. When Mickey heard Rocky's anger and frustration that he hasn't achieved what he should have, he knew it wasn't too late for his fighter to realise his true potential. 

This scene is echoed in the final film in the original Rocky series, Rocky Balboa, where a long-retired Rocky explains why he wants one last fight to his best friend Paulie. 

Rocky: "I don't know, there's still some stuff in the basement."

Paulie: "What basement?" 

Rocky: "In here." 

When Paulie understands what his friend is talking about, later he tells him "You're gonna do alright, Rocko" referring to Rocky's upcoming last fight.

If the first Rocky film has a central message that echoes throughout the whole series, it is that if you have a talent or something you want to achieve or prove to yourself or to others, it is never too late, as long as you still care about it.

Dealing with Defeat: Wilder, Joshua and Dubois

Last Saturday (November 28, 2020) Daniel Dubois was stopped by former WBA Gold belt holder, Joe Joyce. The unexpected outcome of the fight has sparked comparisons with the UFC, in which, fighters can take multiple loses, including submission defeats, without being written off by fans in contrast to boxing where boxers who lose their unbeaten records are too often written off as finished in the sport. 

Dubois, who uses the ring name 'Dynamite' was 15-0 heading into the fight with 14 KO wins but took a knee after a jab to his badly swelling eye in the tenth round and then apparently fully conscious allowed the referee to count him out. Making matters worse Dubois was apparently ahead on points when the fight was stopped.

Dubois blamed the pain from his injured eye for his defeat and skated over the issue of whether he, to use the Q word, 'quit' or not. In a statement posted to Dubois's social media the former British, Commonwealth, WBC Silver and WBO International champion wrote:

"Thank you to everyone who has sent messages of support over the weekend. All my respect to @joejoyceboxing, he boxed well and won fair and square. 

"I thought I was winning the fight. I tried to fight through the injury but I couldn’t in the end. I’m out of hospital and will wait now for the fracture to heal. 

"I’ll be back to prove my doubters wrong and my fans right."

The obvious problem with this narrative being that the eye injury, now reported to be a fractured eye socket, was in no way an accident; Joe Joyce deserves credit for continually jabbing Dubois's left eye throughout the fight as part of a strategy to get the stoppage. Fight fans shouldn't be too hard on Dubois, he is only 23-years-old and was up against an experienced 35-year old Olympic Silver Medalist with wins over former world champions. With his eye closed shut, it could be argued that his corner should have have stopped the fight earlier; so Dubois would have not been in the situation he found himself in.

Other heavyweights, who have lost their undefeated records in recent times, have been much more creative with finding excuses. In February (2020), Tyson Fury knocked out the previously undefeated heavyweight king, Deontay Wilder, to take away the latter's WBC crown. Initially, the fallen champion blamed the clunky 40-pound and $40,000 costume, reminiscent of Robocop, the ex-champ wore for his ring walk. It didn't take long for footage of Wilder telling Joe Rogan that he trains in a "45-pound vest" to resurface and nullify that excuse.

What followed were months of silence from Wilder. Then, on Halloween, fittingly enough, arguably the strangest video ever put out by a former heavyweight champion to explain their loss was posted to Wilder's Social Media. In the bizarre two minuet video, Wilder alleged that Fury's gloves had been interfered with and said his trainer, Mark Breland, had been "disloyal" by stopping the fight. In later outbursts the Bronze Bomber went even further, implying the referee was biased against him and even that Mark Breland had "tampered" with his water.

Excuses and conspiracy theories are nothing new in boxing, of course. Previous heavyweight champions had found excuses to explain their defeats in the past. Mike Tyson in the 1990s and Jack Dempsey back in the 1920s, used the old excuse of a long count from the referee to explain their own defeats and Wilder himself attempted to use the same excuse to explain his split decision draw with Fury in the first fight.

In contrast, eight months earlier (June 1, 2019) Anthony Joshua made no excuses for his knockout loss to Mexican-American heavyweight underdog Andy Ruiz immediately after their first encounter . Joshua's fans, however, behaved very differently to the defeated champion, starting various rumors to explain how their Olympic hero had been beaten up so badly by a last minuet replacement that could often be seen snacking on Snickers during the build up to the fight. The excuses included everything from family arguments, to the Gold Medalist suffering a panic attack before the fight and even Joshua going into the fight already with a concussion following a knockdown in sparing. None of these claims have ever been verified and have been denied by Joshua's team. Shortly after winning the championship back in his rematch with Ruiz, weirdly, Joshua began to blame his previous defeat on a mysterious "health issue" that left him feeling "tired and drained". What that issue is, however, has not yet been made public. 

So, why do boxers feel a need to find excuses for losing? 

In the words of Mike Tyson's great trainer Cus D'amato: "Champion fighters are champion liars." In other words, fighters need to believe in their own invincibility in order to compete at the superhuman level of a world champion and be successful. There is definitely a lot of truth to this idea, but it doesn't explain why we don't see the same levels of excuse making in the Mixed Martial-Arts world of the UFC?  

Perhaps it really comes down to the different reactions of the fans; if fighters know they are going to be abandoned by their fans for simply being second best on the night, or for using their heads to find a way out and stop a potentially career ending injury as Dubois did, then they are going to find excuses.

Mike Tyson vs Roy Jones Jr and Other Heavyweight Comebacks

Back in 2003, following his victory over John Ruiz to win the WBA heavyweight title, Roy Jones Jr, was rumoured to be fighting Mike Tyson next. Jones instead dropped back down to light heavyweight and consequently was never quite the same fighter after putting on the weight and losing it again. Fast forward 17-years and the world are finally going to see the dream match between two of the best fighters of the last 40 years.

The Eighties version of 'Iron' Mike Tyson was a top ten heavyweight in arguably any era of the sport. His reel of 44 knockout wins in 56 fights still captivate new fans that are too young to remember watching any of his fights on live TV. The Nineties version of Mike Tyson was the "Baddest Man on the Planet", a deeply complicated man, who brought the sport into disrepute several times with his disgraceful antics inside and outside of the ring; most famously when he bit a chunk out of Evander Holyfield's ear, not once but twice! 

Wherever you rank him as a fighter, few would quarrel with Mike Tyson being the most exciting boxer in history, and the only heavyweight fighter ever to match the global fame of Muhammad Ali. Ask almost anyone in the world who Mike Tyson is and they will know.  

With the exception of some special appearances in the colorful world of professional wrestling, the last time we saw Mike Tyson inside the ring was his June 12, 2005, bout with then Irish champion, Kevin McBride. Staged at the MCI Center in Washington, DC, 'Iron' Mike was ahead on points and set to erase the embarrassment of losing to former British and Commonwealth champion, Danny Williams, the previous year (July 30, 2004), when the unthinkable happened. 

The once "Baddest Man on the Planet" failed to answer the bell for the seventh round and quit on his stool, ending any talk of a showdown with the glamour division's emerging new heavyweight kings, Vitali Klitschko and his younger brother Wladimir.

After losing three of his last four fights (all against British and Irish fighters) the then 38-year old, who had turned professional twenty years earlier to become the youngest man to win the world heavyweight title at only 20, seemingly knew his time on top of the sport was over and that it was time to pass the torch to a new generation of bigger heavyweights. When asked in the post fight interview about not continuing his career, Tyson replied with an honesty as brutal as his fighting style, admitting that: "I haven't loved fighting since 1990." a reference to his first defeat against 42 to 1 underdog 'Buster' Douglas in Tokyo, Japan 15-years earlier.

In more recent years, the former pound for pound king, Roy Jones Jr, has been attempting to complete his boxing career by winning a recognized version of the cruiserweight title; the one fighting weight from middleweight up to heavyweight, the 'Superman' has never held a major title at. These efforts were setback, however, by Welsh cruiserweight Enzo Maccarinelli, who knocked him out in Moscow in 2015. What followed, were four fights against a list of mostly "who are they?" fighters for pretend world titles. His last fight being for the vacant WBU (German version) Cruiserweight title (whatever that is?) in 2018.

Both men are legends of the ring, and deserve better endings to their stories, but can an eight round exhibition fight between two men in their fifties really deliver that? It could all easily end in disappointment; the fight being stopped prematurely on cuts with no clear winner, or worse Tyson quitting out of exhaustion or even deliberately getting disqualified as he has done before. 

There are also no shortage of boxing comebacks that have ended in tragedy. Rocky Marciano famously cried after knocking out his hero Joe Louis; who had been forced into staging a comeback after a two year layoff because of his huge debt to the IRS. In another sad moment in the sport, Muhammad Ali came out of retirement, in 1980, to fight his former sparring partner and then WBC heavyweight champion, Larry Holmes. Ali was stopped for the only time in his career and beaten up so badly by his friend, that Holmes, echoing Marciano, cried in his dressing room after the fight. 

It isn't always doom and gloom, however, sometimes comebacks are successful, and when they are, it can transform the perception of a fighter from being good to becoming great. Six years before the Ali-Holmes fight, Muhammad Ali had already made a successful comeback when he defeated George Foreman to regain the world title in the 'Rumble In The Jungle' fight in Zaire. And twenty years later the defeated George Foreman successfully regained the world title in his own comeback to become the oldest heavyweight champion in history at 45. Could the winner of Tyson-Jones go on to do something similar? In an era of multiple world titles, interim champions and "Gold" belts could Mike Tyson go on to break George Foreman's record and become both the youngest and oldest heavyweight champion in history?

BIG FIGHT PREDICTION: With Mike Tyson being reportingly paid $10 million and Roy Jones Jr allegedly making $3 million for what is supposed to be an exhibition, both fighters are already winners. But that aside, there is an old idiom in boxing, the last thing to go is a boxer's punch. This combined with Roy Jones's knock out loss against cruiserweight Enzo Maccarinelli and the two minuet rounds favor the older and natural heavyweight Mike Tyson to win by knockout. The longer the fight goes the more of a chance Roy Jones has of winning, so Tyson will want to end it in the early rounds. 

Note: Knockouts were not allowed in the exhibition, and there was to be no official result.

'The Long Count in Boxing History' - Feature Article For ESBR

In a feature article for Eat, Sleep, Boxing, Repeat I look back at the first heavyweight title fight between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder, as well as the long history of "long counts" in boxing. Below is an extract:

"The first fight between the two undefeated heavyweight champions, produced one of the most exciting rounds in recent history. Behind on points, according to longtime pound for pound king, Floyd Mayweather, the 'Bronze Bomber' seemed on the brink of defeat. As the bell rang to conclude the eleventh round, the British and Irish fans packing the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, exploded in applause in anticipation of the Gypsy King's impending victory. But a comeback mirroring the achievements of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, or even 'Iron' Mike Tyson, who all reclaimed the title after a long hiatus away from the ring, was not to be that night.

"The bell rang for the twelfth and final round, and 35 seconds in, Wilder finally connected clean with the knock out power that had, at that time, secured his championship reign through seven successive title defenses. Ironically, if the fight had taken place in a British venue, the fight would have likely been waived off by the referee as soon as Fury's unconscious body had hit the ring canvas.

"Instead, while Wilder and the American fans began to celibate, Referee Jack Reiss, seeing that Fury was down but conscious began to count. One, two, three...nothing...four, five...still nothing. Then at the count of six, Fury somehow began to move his arms and legs, and by the count of nine was on his feet, moving left to right as instructed by the referee, and ready to continue the fight. Rushing in, exhausted Wilder attempted to save his championship, desperately going for another knock out, but Fury came back, almost knocking out the knockout artist before the final bell. It was the kind of excitement that makes the heavyweight division so special, everything can change in the blink of an eye."

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE.