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This could be the year of Conor Benn – Eddie Hearn certainly hopes so, after making him the face of DAZN’s UK output as it heads into its first full year.
Any people travelling on the Tube in London in December will have seen Benn’s face in a lot of adverts ahead of his fight with Chris Algieri.
Benn is due to headline a show at the O2 Arena in mid-April, with former WBO super-lightweight champion Maurice Hooker having been offered the role in the other corner.
“He’s a superstar, Hearn said. “We’ve seen the numbers and the interest, it will be interesting to see what numbers he can do at the O2.
“The Hooker fight is not done yet, but he is the one we’d love to make.”
It has not been an easy launch for DAZN in the UK. And while Hearn’s attention has been on building Matchroom into a global brand, competition at home is tougher than ever.
While Hearn has become the biggest promoter in the UK in the last few years, maintaining that after splitting from Sky Sports is not so straightforward at a time when his stable of fighters are going through a transition.
As of now, boxing is all DAZN has in the UK and in January there was not a single live sporting event scheduled for subscribers’ £7.99. That’s a tough sell. The fix to that could have been a planned acquisition of BT Sport and the many sporting rights that has but talks broke down and last week BT, the channel’s owner, announced that it was in talks to set up a joint venture with Discovery.
But the DAZN plan has always been a long-term one, giving Hearn the money to put on the sort of fights he was previously unable to do without pay-per-view on Sky.
When Hearn left Sky Sports there were whisperings from inside the company that regular boxing coverage might be dropped. With plenty of other sports to pay for after a pandemic hit their advertising revenue, there was a genuine risk that a sport they had covered since their foundation would end.
If there was any motivation needed to stay in boxing, however, it came from Hearn and after he gave a series of interviews that seemed to suggest Sky Sports lacked ambition had been holding him back. In the eyes of Sky Sports, they had made Hearn.
Not only that, but budgets were greatly increased as Sky paid big money to tie up a series of fighters to their new house promoter, BOXXER. It might be by accident rather than design – after two fight nights were postponed – but in February, Sky have Chris Eubank Jr-Liam Williams and Josh Taylor-Jack Catterall, as well as Amir Khan v Kell Brook on pay-per-view. DAZN kicks off its UK schedule with Daniel Jacobs v John Ryder on Saturday, followed by Lawrence Okolie v Michal Cieslak, a fight taking place on Sunday, most likely to avoid a clash with Taylor. Leight Wood v Michael Conlan and Kiko Martinez v Josh Warrington follow in March.
DAZN and Hearn need a star and in Benn it seems to most unlikely one they could find. Starting off with no amateur experience but a big name, the evidence of his first few fights was that his career would be a short one.
Yes, he still has plenty to prove if he is going to be a true world-class, let alone elite, fighter, but his progress has been remarkable.
Other names in the frame for the April date, in case a deal with Hooker is not agreed, are Robert Guerrero and Chris Van Heerden.
“Adrien Broner was the one we really wanted to make but it looks as if it won’t happen,” Hearn said,
But Broner is Hearn’s hope for a fight with Benn later this year. “He says he’s ready for Conor Benn,” Hearn said.
It could be a summer of non-stop blockbusters in Britain.
Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 – covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.