STAGE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP BOXING IN MY BACK GARDEN? GO ON THEN...
It’s bonkers, brilliant and offbeat to say the least, Eddie Hearn reveals all about his ‘war on the lawn’ plan
EDDIE HEARN has a picture in mind and drawings on paper for the kind of garden party that professional sport has never seen before. ‘Just imagine it,’ he tells
Sportsmail. ‘It is summer, the house is all lit up, you can see Canary Wharf in the distance and fireworks are going off. Then, over the hill walk Dillian Whyte and Alexander Povetkin for a massive tear-up on my lawn.
‘World championship boxing in my garden? Oh, go on then.’
A crazy idea for crazy times. But it is very much in the pipeline, as Sportsmail can exclusively reveal today.
After prolonged speculation, Hearn (below) has lifted the lid on an amazing plan which, if it comes to fruition, will return top-level boxing to Britain for a 28-day stretch in July and August.
The proposal, now in an advanced stage, will see fights on four successive Saturdays, broadcast on Sky Sports in the UK and DAZN in the US from the 15-acre garden of Hearn’s Matchroom headquarters in Brentwood.
With a working title of Matchroom Fight Camp and slated to start in mid-July, the aim is for opening night to feature the first women’s world title fight between two Britons when Natasha Jonas challenges Terri Harper for her WBC world super featherweight crown. The camp will culminate in the first or second weekend of August with Whyte’s clash against former world heavyweight champion Povetkin for the WBC’s interim title.
There are discussions over other fights, including Olympic gold medallist and two-weight world champion Katie Taylor.
The costs and the logistics are enormous at a time when nothing is easy amid Covid-19 restrictions. It will cost far in excess of £1million. The plans have been two months in the making once it was obvious the pandemic was not short-lived.
Hearn explains: ‘Financially, this will be painful for us but it is what it is. After the momentum we have worked so hard to build over the past ten years, I’m not letting boxing just dribble back. While other guys go with arenas and empty studios, ours will look very different. ‘We cannot bring boxing back with a dark studio. We have built our product on the razzmatazz, the sexiness and the drama. ‘We want to create a gladiatorial environment that will ensure compelling viewing and that fighters can perform at the highest level.’ The details are complex and everchanging, due to the shifting rules around what is allowed in society and sport, from social distancing to virus-testing. Discussions are ongoing with the British Boxing Board of
Control (BBBC), Brentwood council and the WBC sanctioning body among others, but Hearn has a framework in which he is filling the finer points.
He says: ‘We will turn our headquarters here into an outdoor venue for live boxing, with a full canopy in the middle of the garden and the ring overlooking London.
‘We are building changing rooms for the fighters, setting up a space for a ring walk and looking at how we can do everything you need for this kind of production with as few people as possible.’
Testing and isolation are the major challenges.
‘We are in talks with a nearby hotel about taking control of it for each of the weeks,’ adds Hearn. ‘The way it will work is everyone involved — the fighters, their teams, the broadcasters — will go into the hotel on Tuesday and the fighter and their team will go to a testing facility at the hotel.
‘They will get tested and go straight to their room, where they will wait until they get the result. The tests are comprehensive and take 24 hours, so the fighter will stay in their room until they get a call from our doctors, likely on the Wednesday, with their results. If they are positive, they will leave the hotel immediately. If they are not, they can leave their room and take part in the obligations of fight week, all with social distancing.
‘Everyone involved must go through that process before they are allowed on to our premises.
‘In terms of fight-week promotion, that is the other side of the challenge. How do you do the media around it? We can’t have dozens of journalists turning up, sitting shoulder to shoulder for a presser (press conference) and a weigh-in like normal.
‘It’s likely that Zoom interviews and social-media live streams with the fighters and journalists will be the new norm and we will pump out clips of the fighters, building up to the weigh-ins in the grounds on Fridays and the fights on Saturdays.’
The number of people on site for each of the fight nights will be around 80 to 90, based on five fights per card and a maximum of three cornermen for each of the ten fighters, in addition to a dozen Matchroom employees.
There will also be broadcast staff, eight to nine medical personnel and officials from the BBBC. Everyone will travel to the mansion in face masks.
The fights will include a multitude of differences from what has gone before. There will be temperature checks but no ring-card girls or announcers, while spit buckets will need a lid.
Those buckets must be wiped during each round and then bleached at the fight’s conclusion by someone wearing a face mask, eye protection, a long-sleeve fluid repellent gown and gloves.
Ring ropes and canvases must also be cleaned to a medical standard between each fight and referees and cornermen will wear face masks.
The Board have also suggested no championship contests due to the extra sanctioning personnel needed, which runs counter to Hearn’s plan. But he expects that an agreement can be reached.
‘We are in discussions with the Board at the moment,’ he says. ‘This has been done in dialogue with them. Obviously, we want to start with a world title contest.
‘We would need the WBC to be comfortable with Board of Control officials, some of whom are WBC officials anyway. The challenge with all of this is keeping the numbers down.’
If the final hurdles are cleared and the shows go ahead as planned, it will put boxing among the first sports to bounce back from the pandemic.
‘The idea has been going around our team since this all started,’ says Hearn. ‘We want to make the best of the bad situation and we have had to get creative.
‘I feel like everyone seems a lot more comfortable in an outside environment at the moment. To do a contact sport in a studio or a confined gym with everyone sweating isn’t great. This feels cleaner and safer and it will look sensational, with drones flying over the premises.
‘It will give the fighters that big-event feel. The numbers will be limited but the drama will not.’