Eddie Hearn confirmed that he very well might make a bid to stage Teofimo Lopez's upcoming defence of the unified lightweight championship against George Kambosos, warning Teofimo's current promoter Bob Arum that he shouldn't resort to "bulls— politics" to keep rival promoters at bay.
The bout will go to purse bids, though that has been rescheduled from the initial date of Thursday, Feb. 18 due to bad weather in New Jersey, where the fight's sanctioning body the IBF are situated.
Arum recently said in an interview that Hearn should not attempt to secure the rights to the fight because the two promoters are currently in negotiations to finalise a huge heavyweight unification bout between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury and competing for the Teofimo fights may cause something to happen to that.
Hearn did not take kindly to this rather transparent attempt to scare him off, and told the Ak and Barak Show (on DAZN and Sirius XM Fight Nation): "Well I think if I was Teofimo Lopez I wouldn’t have liked Bob Arum’s interview.
"He’s basically threatening people not to bid because it’ll affect relationships and deals for other fights? It’s got nothing to do with the Fury-Joshua fight!
"This is a fight for the undisputed — well, except for Devin Haney’s belt — lightweight championship of the world against George Kambosos. If that fight goes into the marketplace, that is the fault of Bob Arum, not because of me.
"Ultimately, this is not something that’s just popped up in the last couple of weeks. Purse bids have been around for 50+ years. So Bob Arum knows the script.
"For Arum to come out and say ‘oh, if he bids for Lopez-Kambosos, that might affect the Fury-Joshua fight, well that’s just terrible for boxing. People have to look at that and say ‘what bulls— politics are we watching and following?’
"Why on Earth would one purse bid affect the world heavyweight championship fight? The answer to the question is: we will decide if we’re bidding and no-one’s gonna tell us not to bid,
"If I think bidding for the Lopez fight is the right move for our business, our fans and our broadcasters, then I will be bidding. And if we don’t, we won’t be.
"It will have nothing to do with relationships or negotiations for another fight. It will be ‘are we interested in staging Teofimo Lopez vs. George Kambosos?’ and the answer is yes, we are."
Watch the entire Eddie Hearn interview on A&B, plus a special call-in appearance from the legendary Roy Jones Jr., with with a DAZN subscription (note: users in Argentina, Chile and Colombia must download the app to a device via App Store or Google Play to subscribe to DAZN).