Former middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin and WBC interim champion Jermall Charlo will both need to come to DAZN if they want to further their careers, says Matchroom Boxing USA promoter Eddie Hearn.
Hearn wants to fight Charlo (24-0, 21 KOs) to his promotional stable, but he’s not shown much interest in signing with him. Hearn states that Charlo will get a lot more money fighting on DAZN than he’s been receiving for his fights on Showtime. Hearn says Golovkin needs to sign with DAZN for him to get a trilogy fight against Saul Canelo Alvarez, as he signed a long 5-year, 11-fight, $365 million deal with DAZN on Wednesday.
Golovkin currently is without a network to have his fights televised after his previous deal with HBO expired. HBO will stop televising boxing at the end of December, so there’s no chance of Golovkin signing an extension.
“Yeah, he must [come to DAZN],” Hearn said to the assembled media on Wednesday about Jermall Charlo needing to come to DAZN to make the big money and face the bigger names in boxing. “Yeah, because Showtime can’t pay the kind of money we pay. [Demetrius] Andrade doesn’t want to go anywhere. [Daniel] Jacobs wants the most money possible, and we’re willing to pay Charlo well over what he’s earned,” Hearn said.
With the condition that Charlo can get the kind of money that Canelo was given with his new contract with DAZN, he might be willing to sign with them. But seriously, Charlo might agree to a fraction of the deal Canelo was given. You never know. But Charlo would likely need to have his manager bypass Hearn and go straight to DAZN to make the deal. Golden Boy Promotions went straight to DAZN’s management when they put together the 11-fight deal for Canelo. They didn’t bother with Hearn.
You have to wonder if a huge amount of fighters go straight to the source by dealing with DAZN, it might soon make Hearn obsolete. Once Hearn becomes totally irrelevant for being the main supplier of talent to the DAZN platform, then why would they need him? Most of Hearn’s fighters are British in his Matchroom promotional stable, and DAZN needs fighters that are fairly local to the U.S so that the fans are already familiar with seeing them fight. Right now, Hearn has Anthony Joshua, and he’s really keeping things going well for him, but once he’s gone, there’s not much else in his Matchroom stable to interest U.S boxing fans.
“If you’re a fighter, all the advisers are telling you at the moment that ‘DAZN is not going to work. You’re never going to get a big name on DAZN,’ and then Joshua goes to DAZN,” Hearn said. “But then everyone goes, ‘But yeah, he’s British.’ Now Canelo goes on DAZN for 11 fights. They probably go, ‘Yeah, but he’s Mexican.’ At what point do you say, ‘This is for real,’ and it’s not even a month deep. All the agents say we don’t have big names. Yes, we’ve got them now, and they’re world champions and they’ve got other guys. Now we got Canelo. If Canelo can do 1 million buys at $85 to $99, how many subscriptions can he bring free of charge in his December fight?” Hearn said.
Canelo’s decision to sign with DAZN was a great addition for the company, but it remains to be seen whether they’ll be able to add additional big names to make it work. DAZN’s pockets aren’t bottomless.
“I spoke to [Tom] Loeffler. He [Golovkin] has to [join DAZN,” Hearn said. The carrot will be more from Golden Boy saying [to GGG], ‘come with us, and we’ll give you Canelo fight. We can’t do that. We can’t give that carrot. Does he want to go with Golden Boy or does he want to come with us? He has to be on DAZN or else he ain’t getting the Canelo fight. So this is hat you’re going to see now,”Hearn said.
What could get in the way of Golovkin signing with DAZN is the huge contract that Canelo was given by the company. With Canelo getting a $365 million contract for 11 fights, GGG probably won’t be pleased to get a fraction of that for signing with DAZN. They could end up angering him if they don’t give him a similar lucrative deal. After all, Golovkin was seen as the winner by the boxing public in his two fights against Canelo.
”You’re going to see a natural progression of fighters that have to be on DAZN to get certain fights,” Hearn said.
There are a lot of good fighters that aren’t making great money with their current promotional deals. It’s definitely possible that many of them will trickle over to DAZN if they offer them more money. But after seeing Canelo go straight to the source in circumventing Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing USA promotion, they might use the same tactic. I don’t think it’ll bother Hearn terribly much if they don’t sign with his Matchroom promtion. Just as long as they sign with DAZN, because it’ll give him the chance to try and work a deal to put together fights involving his fighters with them.
Mayweather to Khabib Nurmagomedov: “We can make it happen”
Floyd Mayweather Jr. has accepted Khabib Nurmagomedov’s challenge to fight him, but there’s one catch involved. Khabib must meet him inside the boxing ring, not in the octagon. So if Nurmagomedov was entertaining the idea of getting Mayweather to fight him in a fight under MMA rules, he can forget about it entirely, because it’s not happening in this universe. Mayweather wants the 30-year-old Khabib to know straight away that he’s not going to be able to get him fight in an MMA fight.
Mayweather wants Nurmagomedov to know two things that he’s going to need to agree to for him to get a fight against him:
– The fight must take place in Las Vegas
– It’s going to be a fight under boxing rules, not MMA
One issue that could get in the way of staging the Mayweather-Nurmagomedov in Las Vegas is the suspension that the 30-year-old Nurmagomedov was handed down by the Nevada State Athletic Commission following his fight against McGregor at UFC 229. Nurmagomedov’s decision to jump over the octagon wall to slug it out with someone in the crowd moments after the fight led to him receiving a 10-day suspension. Nurmagomedov’s case is still pending with the Nevada Commission. If they suspend Nurmagomedov further, it could make things complicated for Mayweather to fight him. As long as Mayweather is willing to wait until Nurmagomedov’s suspension is over, the Nevada Commission might be okay with him facing Mayweather. After all, the Commission gave McGregor a boxing license to fight Mayweather last year despite the fact that he’d never fought in a professional fight before. McGregor was allowed to face Mayweather with a 0-0 record. It was an insanely crazy idea to sanction a mismatch like that in my view.
Nurmagomedov hasn’t said yet whether he’ll accept the fight with Mayweather under boxing rules, but if he turns it down, then it’s safe to say that he’ll have ruined his chances for a big payday against the ‘Money Man’.
On Wednesday, Mayweather told TMZ that he’s definitely going to be fighting Nurmagomedov, saying ”we fighting.” However, Mayweather said in his next breath that he’s not sure whether Nurmagomedov will take the fight or whether he’ll be able to. ”We can make it happen.”
UFC lightweight champion Nurmagomedov defeated Conor McGregor by a 4th round submission hold at UFC 229 on October 6 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Nurmagomedov vs. McGregor fight received a great deal of attention in the sports world, and Mayweather appears to want to get in on some of that action. After the fight was over, Nurmagomedov challenged Mayweather to a fight on social media, but he failed to say whether he would be willing to fight him under boxing rules if he needs the match to be under MMA rules. Mayweather is the more popular fighter, so it’s not going to work well for Nurmagomedov in trying to dictate the terms for the fight.