Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn took some time to chat with our friends at Fight Hub TV about his proclamation that the trilogy fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin is a much bigger one than a potential undisputed unification fight between Errol Spence and Terence Crawford.
Obviously a statement like that is going to raise some eyebrows, but Hearn shares his perspective as a businessman in the sport and explains his reasoning. Check out some excerpts of what Hearn had to say below.
Hearn on his position that Canelo vs GGG 3 is a bigger fight than Errol Spence vs Terence Crawford
“When I talk about size, I talk about revenue. So that’s it, really. It’s at least — at least — four times bigger, maybe more. But I’m just talking about revenue. If you said to hardcore fight fans ‘what’s the better, bigger fight’ I think it could be (fairly split) because that’s a different world. But you’re talking about two global icons in the sport, two legends of the sport, worldwide names, versus two brilliant American fighters that no one really knows, like outside of boxing fans in America.
“When I say that, it’s not offensive to the fight, I’m just giving you the financial facts of what is bigger, basically.”
On if hardcore fans aren’t the ones who are typically generating the revenue anyway
“No, they’re not. The casual fans are the ones who buy — that’s how you have a big pay-per-view. But boxing fans probably account for between a hundred to two hundred pay-per-views. That’s why when you talk about Errol Spence, they say his biggest pay-per-view is 300,000. I don’t actually believe that but if it was, that’s as big as it gets against Mikey Garcia, I believe that was.
“Terence Crawford I don’t think has done more than 100, 150 (thousand) tops. So that just goes with my argument. Hardcore fight fans will buy Errol Spence and Terence Crawford pay-per-views. How do you get a million buys? How do you get 1.2 million buys? Canelo Alvarez just did 600,000 against Bivol, 700,000 against Plant. These are consistent numbers, he’s a freak in terms of his draw power.
“So it’s not really about who comes from where, it’s just that one guy does these numbers and another guy does these numbers. And I’m just telling you that I know the money that’s generated for all these fights and Canelo-GGG is miles bigger than that fight. Again, not what’s a better fight, which one do you want to see more — I’m just telling you financially which one’s bigger.”
On Leonard Ellerbe saying Canelo’s last fight only did 120,000 buys against Bivol
“120 is about the number that it did off DAZN. And that was actually stated in the message, in the tweet. It did 120,000 buys off platform. People got to realize, this was a DAZN pay-per-view. Off platform is just other random platforms that were engaged during that fight. The bulk of the pay-per-views were on DAZN. Speak to DAZN, did over 600,000 buys, a huge success. We hope (Canelo vs GGG 3) does a million. And what that will do is it will show us this is a sustainable pay-per-view platform, not what we intend or want it to be, but the fact that we have the ability to do success pay-per-views on the platform is great for us because we can keep fights like this for the fans on DAZN.”
On the magnitude of Spence vs Crawford being for undisputed, and if that can’t draw casual fan interest
“With this fight (Canelo vs GGG), you put these guys two together — it’s massive. It’s a million buys or thereabouts. You put those other guys, you have to engage the casual fans. Every boxing fan will buy Spence vs Crawford, 250-300 thousand. How do you get it to a million?
“If you engage that market through great promotion, through a little bit of bad blood, through engaging linear platforms like ESPN and FOX and helping it growing, I believe that fight could get to five or six hundred thousand buys. But not really beyond. But it’s a brilliant fight between two brilliant fighters. It’s just that the casual fan doesn’t know much about them, so you got a lot of work to do. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it — if they get together and start rolling around on the stage, and the build-up is great and gets it right FOX, gets it right on ESPN, it’s a big fight with big pay-per-view, but you’ve got a lot of work to do.”
On why we should expect to be Canelo vs GGG 3 to be big success when there’s sentiment that we’ve already seen this fight twice before and it’s past its peak
“Why do people want to see this fight? The first two were amazing. The first one was disputed, a lot of people thought Gennadiy won the second one — all these reasons. You’ve just seen two Fights of the Year, right. A lot of people feel like Gennadiy Golovkin won both fights, especially the first fight, or the second fight, or whatever you want to say. So why not do it again? You’ve got the best of 160 against the best of 168, in my opinion…bad blood, they can’t stand each other, stylistically it’s an absolute war. So you can’t ask me why would we want to see it again when it’s one of the greatest fights that can be made in the sport.”