By Steve Kim
With the rather surprising news that unified middleweight champion Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez would be moving up in weight to face WBA 'regular' super middleweight titlist, Rocky Fielding, on December 15th at the Madison Square Garden - many have speculated just who will distribute and televise this event.
With Fielding being promoted by Matchroom Sports, many are under the impression that streaming service DAZN will be the broadcaster.
Eddie Hearn tells BoxingScene.com that DAZN is, "definitely in the running, I think Golden Boy is going to be talking to everybody and we've got one side of the main event. So it gives us a good leg-in but certainly nothing is guaranteed and we'll see what happens over the next few days and weeks and see what they announce in terms of the U.S. broadcast but we'd love to have the fight on DAZN."
The fact that Alvarez is a legitimate pay-per-view franchise doesn't adversely effect their chance to procure the rights to 'Canelo' despite being a streaming platform.
"We don't need pay-per-view capabilities, we just need pay-per-view money which is what we've got and what we bring to the table is guaranteed rights fees - not the hope of doing certain numbers," explained Hearn.
"So certainly in the fight that moves towards 2, 3, 400,000 pay-per-view buys that's absolutely no problem for us.
"Do we have the ability to match the revenue of a million buys-plus? The answer I believe is yes we do. And that's why we're going to be so competitive with people like Canelo. You don't have to take the risk on pay-per-view numbers when you're fighting on DAZN because we have money to give your the guaranteed rights fee."
Regardless, Hearn is excited by the opportunity that Fielding has garnered.
"It's great to be working with Golden Boy, great to be working with Oscar De La Hoya, Eric Gomez and obviously the first fight I'll be involved with where I've had any kind of involvement with Canelo, which is an honor and great to be involved in future events at Madison Square Garden," Hearn said.
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
