Promoter Eddie Hearn is really, really good at two things– darts and falling into piles of money. The Matchroom Boxing head, who inherited daddy’s promotional company and contacts, parlayed his name value into a reported $1 billion boxing deal with upstart streaming service DAZN (which he drove straight, well, nowhere, really). And now, the vociferous nepo baby and “look at me” boxing presence has attached himself to yet another money mark in the form of Saudi Arabia’s Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of the Saudi General Entertainment Authority.
Turki, money in hand and money-grubbing lackeys grovelling behind him, has stepped into a bizarre position of quick control in boxing, something akin to some random guy stepping on to a city bus and immediately seizing control of the wheel from the driver. Hearn, with his innate coin-sniffing abilities, was the first to embrace the chubby would-be boxing dictator and open the door to the sport for him. With rival UK promoter Frank Warren joining hand-in-hand (literally, hand-in-hand), Hearn has pretty much shipped off all of the top level UK boxing scene to Saudi Arabia. Before his Turki basting began, Hearn had turned himself into a quick friend of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, boxing’s cash cow and increasingly petulant diva.
