Boxxer head Ben Shalom sounds pretty fed up with Eddie Hearn—even if he won’t refer to the Matchroom boss by name.
In a recent interview, Shalom, the 27-year-old British promoter whose company has an exclusive arrangement with Sky, took some loosely veiled shots at Hearn over what he feels has been acts of sabotage from the veteran promoter.
The two powerbrokers recently feuded, albeit indirectly, via the media, over a purse bid boondoggle involving Boxxer-backed Richard Riakporhe and Australia’s Jai Opetaia, the IBF cruiserweight champion who is co-promoted by Hearn’s Matchroom. Riakporhe backed out of the scheduled purse bid, prompting Hearn to rip into the upstart promoter, saying Shalom was "afraid" to get outbid. Boxing fans have likewise excoriated Shalom and Boxxer for blatantly trying to keep their business in-house. Hearn’s Matchroom was formerly the exclusive promoter for Sky, but it left the broadcaster in 2021 for the streaming platform DAZN. (Turning in the higher dollar sum in a purse bid gives the winning promoter the rights to stage the fight on their network).
A similar situation played out recently between the rival companies in April, when the British Boxing Board of Control ordered a heavyweight title fight between beltholder Fabio Wardley (Matchroom) and Frazer Clarke (Boxxer). But moments before the bid was scheduled to take place, Shalom had Clarke pull out of the all-British match-up.
While he did not mention Matchroom or Hearn in the interview, Shalom made it clear that he has not appreciated how the rival outfit has tried to disrupt Boxxer’s business in recent months. Shalom cited interference from Hearn in trying to stage the rematch middleweight bout between Chris Eubank Jr. and Liam Smith (Sept. 2, Manchester) and a light heavyweight fight between Joshua Buatsi and Dan Azeez (Oct. 21, London).
“Look, we work with all promoters but there seems to be one promoter that wants to stop every fight we did,” Shalom said on BBC 5 Live Boxing. “We had it with Eubank-Smith and it went on and on and on. We had it with this fight (Buatsi-Azeez), and it nearly stopped that. And we had three fights we wanted to make, one was Riakporh-Opetai, one was Buatsi-Azeez, one was Eubank-Smith. We managed to get two of them through.”
Shalom insisted that Riakporh has a better option on the horizon than Opetaia, which he says will be made public soon.
“It got to the point (in Riakporh-Opetaia talks) where we accepted an offer to go to Australia," Shalom said. “We’d been asked for an offer for the UK, which we gave and during this time another opportunity came up, which will be announced this week and Richard felt that was the best option. We’ve been messed around for a long time.”
Sean Nam is the author of Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing.
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