Eddie Hearn has responded to fellow promoter Bob Arum's criticisms over the past few days, saying the Top Rank boss is "throwing his toys out of the pram" because Sky Sports would not buy the U.K rights to the Vasiliy Lomachenko vs. Teofimo Lopez Jr. fight.
Lomachenko and Lopez will attempt to unify the lightweight division in a fight most diehard fans expect to be one of the best of 2020. The card will air live on ESPN in the U.S. on Oct. 17 and has recently been announced as being available via FITE in the U.K, for a pay-per-view fee.
Arum's decision to take swipes at the head of Matchroom Boxing with regards to how many rematch clauses Hearn puts in his contracts and how many times he and Sky have gone behind the paywall during a pandemic appeared to be out of the blue, especially considering how frequently the two promoters work together.
Hearn made a guest appearance on the latest Boxing News Podcast and claimed Arum made the comments because he did not get his own way when trying to get Sky to, ironically, put Lomachenko vs. Lopez as well as Terence Crawford's Nov. 14 title fight against Kell Brook on PPV in the U.K.
"Bob Arum — god bless him — will tell you his interpretation of a situation," Hearn told Matt Christie and Alex Steedman.
"Bob Arum received an offer from me for the Lomachenko fight! But he had a chip on his shoulder because Top Rank went directly to Sky and they told them to talk to me [instead].
"By the way, when Arum says, ‘Oh, all they want to do is pay-per-views’, this is the same guy that approached Sky to put Crawford vs. Brook on PPV on Nov. 14. And when Sky said that’s not a PPV fight, he threw his toys out of the pram.
"Then he said ‘I want this much for it’, and Sky said, ‘We don’t have a budget for that, Eddie has our budget and our plan of what we’re doing’.
"I put an offer in to Bob. It was an average offer. But by that moment, Bob was too personally disrespected after the conversations about Crawford-Brook and Lomachenko."
Hearn continued to explain that he believes Arum's feeling of "disrespect" comes because his pride was hurt by having to ask a rival promoter directly to buy one of his fights for overseas airing.
He said: "When you talk about the politics of boxing, they can’t bring themselves to approach me. It’s a weird set-up in boxing where they don’t wanna ask me to buy the fight.
"So I called Bob and said I’m busy focusing on our fighters and our cards, but here’s an offer to show Lomachenko vs. Lopez. Arum said ‘I’ll pass’ and I said OK.
"I don’t even think the offer was that much less than what he will get from FITE, but by that point he was so pissed off inside that his head had gone, basically."
While Lomachenko-Lopez is a big deal in the boxing world, time zones and their limited appeal to a casual audience were obstacles that Sky and other British providers had to consider.
"What we have to bring ourselves back from, in a commercial world, is that boxing at 4 a.m. local time doesn’t work, and it doesn’t rate," Hearn went on to say.
"So all of this noise on social media about these fights and how we should air these fights is huge, but when we broadcast it, the numbers are s—.
"The top guys at Sky won’t know a lot about Teofimo Lopez Jr. They might not even know that much about Vasiliy Lomachenko. But what they look at is what the numbers would be for that. [We would give them an estimate of] oh, about 30,000. And they’d say, ‘Well where’s the value in that?’
Hearn, who called into the podcast during his self-isolation after a positive COVID-19 test kept him away from the Joshua Buatsi vs. Marko Calic card on Sunday, pointed out the irony of Arum criticising Sky and Matchroom charging for certain fights during a pandemic when he wanted them to put both Lomachenko-Lopez and Crawford-Brook behind a British paywall.
"I think Lomachenko-Lopez a great fight, and I did want it on Sky," continued Hearn. "That’s why I made an offer out of my budget to try and make it happen.
"But Bob cannot say about how we make everything PPV. He wanted Brook vs. Crawford on PPV. And — hang on — Lomachenko vs. Lopez is PPV! It’s on PPV in the UK [via FITE]. So he’s charging for that fight and he’s moaning that other people are charging for fights."