Eddie Hearn is asking IBF mandatory Karen Chukhadzhian’s team to allow the fight against Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis to be staged in Philadelphia as part of a doubleheader with Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez on November 9th.
Hearn is in this predicament of needing to ask Chukhadzhian’s team to make the fight in Philadelphia because he lost the purse bid.
If Hearn had put the money down to win the bid, he wouldn’t have had to negotiate. In the end, it would have been less costly for Hearn if he’d won the bid.
There’s a lesson for the Matchroom promoter: Think in the long term without considering future consequences. Eddie Hearn wasn’t so concerned about saving a little money; he would have won the purse bid for the Boots Ennis vs. Karen Chukhadzhian fight.
It’ll be bad for Boots Ennis if he’s forced to fight Chukhadzhian in Germany on November 9th because that could spoil Hearn’s plans for a doubleheader with WBC super flyweight champion Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez defending against Pedro Guevara in the co-feature.
With Bam Rodriguez off the card and Boots fighting Chukhadzhian alone with a skeleton crew on the undercard, it won’t bring in good numbers on DAZN.
If Hearn was considering placing Boots’ November 9th fight on PPV, he could forget about that. Fans won’t pay to see a dreary rematch between Ennis and the defensive artist Chukhadzhian.
“We’re talking to Chukhadzhian’s team. Really, we want him to unify, but we can only do that if we take the Chukhadzhian fight,” said Eddie Hearn to the Boxing News channel about Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis’ next fight on November 9th.
In the end, Hearn could win up paying Team Chukhadzhian a lot more money for them to come to Philadelphia than if he’s simply won the purse bid. Again, Hearn is shortsighted with his view of things.
He could have avoided the Chukhadzhian fight altogether if he had negotiated the unification match for Boots Ennis with WBO welterweight champion Brian Norman Jr. by giving him the extra $500K that he wanted. Again, this is another example of Hearn’s short-sighted view of things. He is unwilling to invest money without seeing the long-term consequences of trying to save a few quid.
“So, we probably will take that fight [with Chukhadzhian] and see if [Brian] Norman can wake up or, if not, try and fight Stanionis or Barrios,” said Hearn.” Boots is in no rush to move to 154 before he unifies. So, for me, I’d like him to do that, but it would mean going through with that fight [Chukhadzhian].’
For the next round of negotiations with hearn, Brian Norman Jr’s asking price will likely increase from the $2.2 million that he wanted this time. Once Norman Jr’ turns in another sparking performance in his title defense against Derrieck Cuevas on November 8th, he may want in the ballpark of $3 million for a unification fight with Ennis.
In other words, Hearn will have missed the boat by being too cheap when negotiating with Norman Jr, wrecking Boots’ chances of ever becoming undisputed champion at welterweight.
“We’d take that fight now. He wants that fight bad,” said Hearn about whether Boots Ennis would move up to 154 if a fight against Terence Crawford were offered to him.
Crawford vs. Ennis fight will never happen because Hearn would never be able to negotiate that match-up without His Excellency Turki Alalshikh stepping in to come up with the finances.
With Hearn nickel-and-diming in trying to negotiate deals on Boots Ennis’ behalf, he would never be able to put together a fight against Crawford. The Nebraska native would likely want $20 million for a fight against Boots Ennis, which would put Hearn in a state of shock.
