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ATLANTIC CITY – If Atlantic City will forever be remembered by those around him as where Jaron “Boots” Ennis came of age, for his promoter, Eddie Hearn, it remains where he gained his first world champion.
When Darren Barker, to whom Hearn remains close, climbed off of the canvas to outpoint Australia’s Daniel Geale and win the IBF middleweight title, Hearn had for the first time taken a fighter to world level and on to a sanctioning body title.
Carl Froch, by then, had beaten Lucien Bute to start his second reign as a super-middleweight champion, but Matchroom inherited Froch when he already possessed a title, and when he also remained committed to the Super Six.
Twelve years on Barker and Froch are retired and Hearn and Matchroom are considerably more powerful and influential. In victory over Eimantas Stanionis on Saturday Ennis established himself among the world’s very finest fighters; Shakur Stevenson and Richardson Hitchins, further Matchroom fighters and world champions from America, were ringside; Barry Hearn, whose shadow for so long loomed over Eddie, was nowhere to be seen.
“First we brought him here to fight Sergio Martinez, and then we brought him back to fight Daniel Geale,” Hearn said of Barker. “Martinez was at the Boardwalk Hall; Geale was at The Revel [Resort], up the road.
“It’s weird [to be back]. I’ve actually come back since with Gavin Rees against [Adrien] Broner, [and] Lee Purdy against Devon Alexander, but this is obviously the first big fight. I remember being there for Froch-[Andre] Ward and it was more than half-empty, and that was the final of the Super Six, and I just remember looking around.
“When you’re reading stuff and talking about the fighters that have boxed there and stuff like that, I’m pretty proud to fill it up, because we are a British promotional company, and we’ve got people coming up to us here who work for Visit Atlantic City and the venue, [saying] ‘I just want to say thanks – this is massive for us’. What a chance to start bringing boxing back here regularly. It’s a strange place in the respect of it’s empty, and then all of a sudden, bang – Friday night, Saturday night particularly, the place is wild.
“We took a punt leaving Philadelphia, ‘cause we’d done 14,000 and 12,000 [strong crowds]. ‘Boots’ was, ‘We’ve been there twice in six months – we should switch it up’. It was a punt coming down here – it’s paid off.”
When Barker defeated Geale in 2013 Ennis was in his teens and Floyd Mayweather – who once excelled at the Boardwalk Hall in victory over Arturo Gatti – was the world’s leading welterweight. Ennis’ mature performance throughout the course of six one-sided rounds with Stanionis means that in 2025 he has succeeded in that position Terence Crawford, who succeeded Mayweather. In the years between then and his signing a promotional agreement with Matchroom in 2024, his name was prominent on a shortlist of fighters Hearn targeted when in 2018 agreeing a broadcast deal with DAZN to expand into the US.
“[Devin] Haney; Shakur Stevenson; [Edgar] Berlanga [were other names on that shortlist],” he said. “Around that time [Ennis] was boxing on ShoBox – so was Devin. They were like the future. It was really more like 2021, 2022, where I’m looking at Ennis going, ‘Fucking hell…’. We tried to sign him three or four times.
“It’s unrecognizable [from when Barker beat Geale]. We had three people working [for Matchroom]. It was me, John Wish [Wischusen, then matchmaker], and Frank [Smith, chief executive in 2025]. We’ve got 60 people now, globally, just working on the boxing. It’s a success story in the fact we’ve never really had a plan, or a strategy. We’ve just worked our bollocks off and had a passion for what we do. Luckily we’ve been good enough.
“But it is unrecognizable. I said to my dad [Barry], ‘I can’t believe we’re gonna sell out Boardwalk Hall – it’s pretty cool, innit?’. I think sometimes, we never really look back, ‘cause it’s every week as well. Barker – I don’t even really remember it, because it’s week in, week out.
“The first fight against Sergio Martinez [in 2011], we really didn’t know what we were doing. Darren had a load of injuries, and he got several hundred thousand dollars for that fight. At the time, when they made the offer, [Barker’s trainer] Tony Sims and everybody thought, ‘This is a big, big step up’, because at the time Martinez was a pound-for-pound fighter. We also knew Darren was very good.
“Darren was always plagued with injuries, and I just looked at it and I thought, ‘When you have this fight, you’ll do well’. I thought he could win, ‘cause I was naive then. ‘You’re gonna have enough money to pay your mortgage off; you can come back, if you lose, fight for the European [title] again, etc, etc’. He put up a good fight, got beaten; came back with a couple of wins. But that fight gave him the profile to put himself in line.
“The Daniel Geale fight was a voluntary defense. We plucked that out of nowhere, and the money was pretty shit for that fight. But obviously he went and won it, and from there boxed Felix Sturm for a load of money. But he was fucked [injured again], and straight after that he retired.
“I’d put him right up there [as one of my leading highlights in boxing]. I remember the moments. When you’re in the ring, and you hear, ‘And the new’. That one, with Darren – my dad was there; [Michael] Buffer was in the ring. I thought we’d won it by two rounds, but I felt like it could all be on the last round. ‘And the new!’, and it’s like Tony Sims – all good family friends – Darren’s dad, grandad, and brother, they’re all out the back of The Revel. It was unbelievable.
“There’s only like a dozen [other moments in boxing that compare]. They’re the moments that you fucking just lose your shit completely. That one was even sweeter, because I didn’t really know what we were doing back then. I didn’t plan. I didn’t think, ‘We’re gonna have global domination; this market; that market; an app’s gonna come along’. We were just like, ‘Fucking hell – we’re in Atlantic City and fighting for the world title’. Those days were very enjoyable.”
The success with England’s Barker – today a pundit and commentator for DAZN – was fleeting, but Ennis, a fighter destined for junior middleweight and perhaps middleweight, and Stevenson, who will be the favorite when he fights William Zepeda in the coming months, are capable of giving Matchroom increased long-term power in the US.
Dmitry Bivol, Jai Opetaia, Katie Taylor and Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez are more of Matchroom’s and the world’s finest fighters; Omari Jones was the US’ most promising Olympian and has also signed with them promotional terms. Where once Hearn was over-reliant on Anthony Joshua, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and the developing Devin Haney, he is anticipating further success from Diego Pacheco and Andy Cruz.
“[There’s] a lot more pressure now,” he explained. “A lot more invasion, if you like – social media – that’s my fault as well ‘cause I do a million interviews, and I’m very accessible. People will just queue up and I’ll never say ‘No’, really.
“[I’m] a lot wiser. Probably calmer, at times. My fuse is shorter now with certain people, but calmer on the whole. Back then I’d take on the world. Now I’m a little bit more diplomatic, at times.
“Sometimes when people see the reaction [to results like Barker’s] they know it ain’t fake, ‘cause it just can’t be. They look and go, ‘Who’s that guy? He loves it, don’t he?’. The fighters like that as well, and that’s the truth.
“The only thing I would say is as you get bigger, your relationships with the fighters aren’t as strong, ‘cause they’ve got a manager; a lawyer. [Carl] Frampton’s probably the best example, where I never spoke to Frampton – I don’t think I had more than one conversation. I promoted him for half-a-dozen fights. So you never really enjoy it as much.”
