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Veteran promoter Barry Hearn is holding his nose at the growing trend of influencer boxing.
Hearn, who runs Matchroom Sport with son Eddie Hearn, has no interest in watching that form of entertainment but he understands that a younger audience is drawn to those types of events.
In the last few months, influencer boxing has generated viral headlines for the wrong reasons. KSI's fight with Joe Fournier was ruled a no-contest after a knockout came from an elbow shot. Two female influencers had a brief makeout session during their weigh-in. One influencer, after winning her bout on a Misfits card, exposed her breasts to the live crowd and DAZN's steaming audience. A planned fight was canceled after one influencer threw pork hotdogs at his Muslim opponent at a press conference. Chaos broke out when two female influencers had a physical confrontation that saw one of them slammed through a table and leave in an ambulance.
“It leaves me cold really. It’s not for me but that doesn’t mean to say it’s not for another bunch of kids. It comes under that rule; if that’s how you can make a living and you can get away with it then good luck to you. It’s not for me to watch but I do know a lot of people who follow it because it’s a young social media market," Hearn explained to BettingSites.co.uk.
“It may well be that it’s to the detriment of boxing in the long term because sport is about respect and respecting the ability of individuals. Boxing has always been held in very high esteem and this may slightly detract from that because it brings in people that think that’s real boxing when of course it’s not. I don’t blame them [ the influencers] for doing it. I blame us for watching it.”
