Eddie (Edward) Hearn is to many a calm head in a noisy room regarding talks of negotiations for prospective fights. Maybe not so calm when you have Derek Chisora throwing a table over yourself, Kalle Sauerland, Adam Smith, Mark Tibbs and Dillian Whyte but its one of his positive skills credited to him. No one would question Hearn if he was this week and the previous three weeks cutting a frustrated figure with the behaviour and temperament of Tyson Fury regarding an all British heavyweigh showdown. Deadlines self-imposed by Fury, calling off talks, recommence talks, goading, baiting, leaking of potential opponents and overall something which is a new phenomena for British boxing to the extreme. Nobody would have blamed Hearn, Joshua and Matchroom as a whole for walking out of talks and moving on to pastures new even if it was to the detriment of British boxing.
Tyson on Thursday (29th September) claimed he has been urged to allow talks to recommence by promoter Frank Warren and Fury in a statement claimed an agreement between the broadcasters had been agreed by BT Sport, Dazn and ESPN has been reached but Hearn shot down those claims saying a deal is not done on that regard in terms of a UK broadcaster. Hearn in speaking to IFLTV stated that Fury is nothing but a distraction in the talks but praised Queensberry Promotions (Frank Warren) in their manner and conduct in talks,
“Certainly, the deal is not done with BT, DAZN and everybody with UK global rights,” Hearn told iFL TV. “I just don’t know what Tyson Fury really wants.”
“Yesterday, Wednesday afternoon, we received the comments from Queensberry on our final draft, which there were many,” Hearn continued. “And I spoke to George Warren last night at midnight and said, ‘Look, Tyson says he’s not doing the fight but let me talk to him and we’ll go from there. In the meantime, we’re working on the contract which you sent to us yesterday. Then out of nowhere we see the Instagram post like the rest of the world. You’ve got to sign it today, again.
“It’s not getting signed today. Because there are a number of things to work on in the agreement. We’ve never been told once by Queensberry—because they know it’s not ready to be signed yet—'You have to sign this contract today.’ The only time we ever see that is generally on the date or a day before from Tyson Fury … we’ve had three or four people working nonstop on this fight for a long time. I can’t actually fault anybody from Queensberry’s side and if you ask them honestly, I don’t think they can fault anyone from our side. There’s been no bad mouthing, it’s been real smooth.”
Hearn also stated that Joshua has accepted all terms in the proposal which Edward states its heavily in favour of Fury along with objecting to Hearn, Joshua and Matchroom not being allowed to be more involved with the financials with the fight in regards to commercial deals etc.
“This is a real disadvantage to Anthony Joshua,” Hearn said. “This fight date, everything. From a training perspective we wanted December 17th. We made that publicly clear. We weren’t given the option. He (Joshua) even accepted the date, he even accepted the terms. All the terms were non changeable, and he accepted all of them.”
“Any event where you have a financial split it’s not just a case of, ‘We’ll do all the deals and sorry about your existing commercial deals and we’ll let you know how much it comes to.’ No,” Hearn said. “We have to be involved in those deals and ultimately Queensberry has the final right of say on all the commercial deals.”
“It’s not slow,” Hearn said of negotiations. “You’re talking about the biggest fight in boxing. This process has not been slow. What is frustrating is Fury comes out of nowhere and cancels the fight, two days later he comes back and says you’ve got until today. But we only received the comments from Queensberry for our final draft late yesterday afternoon.”
