Matchroom Boxing boss Eddie Hearn admits that boxing and live sports as a whole have a long way to go before they can return to the pre-2020 days of jam-packed crowds, as he himself prepares to leave self-isolation following a positive COVID-19 test.
Hearn was absent from the latest Matchroom event on Sunday as Joshua Buatsi returned to the ring to inflict a first professional defeat upon Marko Calic. In addition to watching the action on TV like many fans, Hearn has used his time in quarantine to conduct more business remotely, as well as extra interviews.
During one of those media duties, on the Boxing News Podcast with Matt Christie and Alex Steedman, Hearn detailed his first-hand experience of the virus.
"[I’ve reached] the first day where I feel like I don’t have COVID," said Hearn. "I’ve not felt horrendous. I haven’t felt great, but it’s felt like I’ve just had a cold.
"I’ve been out in the garden, I’ve had a run which didn’t go very well but I’m getting there and I can’t wait to get back to work. Saturday is my ‘release day’.
"I'm sitting up in this little room on my laptop, doing Zooms, interviews and conference calls. There's nothing quite like being out there doing work, so it was horrible to miss the Buatsi-Calic show. I’ve not missed a show for 10 years so it was a gutter.
"I felt fit and I felt good to go but that’s the great thing about testing, because I wouldn’t have ever known I had it and I would have been going around everywhere."
Indeed, Hearn, who has been easing his roster of fighters back into the ring very carefully since August, feels the positive test has further improved his understanding of a very uncertain situation.
"You learn so much," he continued. "It's actually good research, getting COVID. You learn so much about the virus, CT levels, how infectious people are at certain stages ... I think the main thing I've found out after being on conference calls with doctors this week is that nobody really knows.
"You're speaking to these experts and you'll ask them a question and they'll say 'we just don't know that yet'. It's amazing and remarkable that they've been working on it for six months now and they still don't have anywhere near the answers, really.
"We don't know [how it works]. My dad [Barry Hearn, head of Matchroom Sports] tested positive and I wasn't really around him that much. My wife and my kids tested negative and I was around them constantly, and they've still had to self-isolate. Is it a bit of luck? Is it related to immune systems? I don't know.
"We went through a stage where we didn’t know anyone who had it — I didn’t know anyone who had it [around the start of lockdown]. But now I’m hearing every day [that someone I know] has got it now. My friends, my parents … "
Hearn went on to admit that while the boxing has returned, bringing paying audiences back into buildings could remain a long way away but that he's proud of the way his company are handling things so far.He said: "It’s definitely back, and it’s a big concern because our big plan was to drive fans back to the events. And when this happened in March, we said, ‘Okay, we’re sure we’ll be back in July, don’t worry’. And then we said August. And then September. And now we’re wondering if we can get a crowd for AJ [Anthony Joshua is expected to fight Kubrat Pulev in December].
"We’ve had to adapt the way we run our business. We’ve had to be smart, and we’ve now got a really good model in place. Our testing system works. We've seen places do press conferences with their athletes prior to the results of their testing coming back.
"We don’t just do tests prior to fights. We test them as they arrive and then send them to their rooms. They do not even enter the ‘bubble’ until we have a negative result. We’ve done 630 tests in boxing now — at £140 a pop, by the way — and we’ve had one positive result, which was me.
"I was talking to my dad about it. We live for live events, the energy of the crowd. But I’m starting to get a little intrigued with behind-closed-doors sport.
"Not just boxing, but we started the Grand Prix of Darts recently, and there’s something quite fascinating about it. I think for a hardcore fan, sometimes you prefer that kind of environment and that intensity.
"On Sunday, for instance, we turned the mics up in Milton Keynes and you could hear John Harding Jr. breathing heavily. You could hear that his gas tank was empty. You could hear every word of the corner teams and all that kind of interaction.
"Don’t get me wrong: for the long-term sustainability of the sport, we must bring fans back. But we’ve also got to make it as compelling as we can in the short-term. And we’re trying to do that via the production, the set, the live feel … but it’s very difficult."