Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn caught up with Ring Magazine to discuss a few topics in the boxing world including Conor Benn recently getting trounced by Ryan Garcia, planning Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis next fight, what he makes of the social media beef with Terence Crawford, and Hamzah Sheeraz vacating his world title rather than make a mandatory defense against Janibek Alimkhanuly
. Check out some excerpts from Hearn below.Hearn on Conor Benn’s loss to Ryan Garcia
“When someone gets beaten in such a one-sided fashion it’s easy for everybody to
jump on the bandwagon, ‘oh he was never any good’. The fact is Conor Benn is a good fighter. You can’t say he’s not a good fighter. What you can say is ‘is he world class?’ and I’m a little bit conflicted because I have spent many, many years telling everyone he was, and I wasn’t doing it as a lie. I believed he could mix it at world level but he had never boxed at world level, other than a weight drained Chris Eubank who really shouldn’t have been in the ring.”
On plans for a Boots vs Kelly unification
“They’re just trying to get the date now. That fight’s almost certain to happen next. There is a chance it could land at the end of November because obviously the Tyson vs AJ fight’s not happening then. But December might be more realistic.”
On Crawford taunting Boots on social media
“I don’t really understand what Crawford’s doing…‘If I come out of retirement, will you fight me?’ [Boots says] ‘Yeah, 1000%.’ [Crawford says] ‘Hahaha, you said you were after the belts.’ It’s like, yeah, but you’re Terence Crawford…I just thought it was weird and I just feel like Terence, you’re either retired or you’re not. And I think he’s stuck in a little place of — I know he likes to wind people up a little bit but I think in his head he don’t really know what he’s doing [with retirement].”
On Sheeraz vacating his title
“Very tough decision and I have to say I think Hamzah is very educated, he carries himself with great class. I feel a bit sorry for him because I think in his last fight it was stop/start…I think he performed really badly in that fight and I think he’s a great fighter.
“I don’t like the fact that Janibek tested positive for drugs and then after he served the six month ban came straight back as a mandatory challenger. Now, I do believe that fighters deserve the opportunity to get to explain themselves and if they’re not guilty…I think you deserve to be able to resume your career if you’re proven innocent in that respect. Do you deserve to go straight back in as mandatory? I’m not so sure.
“And although I don’t think Queenberry purse bid for the fight was out of range in terms of the commercials of the fight, it’s not a lot of money to fight Janibek, who’s a very good fighter…I think given where Hamzah is…I get it. But not it’s going to be really important — what do you do now? You better have a plan.”
