Eddie Hearn believes Whyte-Chisora could do TWENTY TIMES more PPV buys than Warrington-Frampton
Eddie Hearn is “not in the slightest” bit worried about Warrington-Frampton.
The Matchroom boss revealed earlier this week that he plans to put on a big pay-per-view rematch between feuding heavyweights Dillian Whyte and Dereck Chisora at the O2 Arena in London on DECEMBER 22nd.
The fight date clashes with that of the seemingly agreed but unannounced and unconfirmed Josh Warrington v Carl Frampton IBF featherweight world title fight at the Manchester Arena.
While many fight fans have lamented the prospect of having to choose between the two, Hearn does not view the clash as real competition and believes that Whyte-Chisora 2 could outsell Warrington-Frampton TWENTY times.
The English promoter sees big differences between the two fights and believes that, commercially, everything is stacked in Whyte v Chisora’s favour.
The pair box in the lucrative heavyweight division, have fought each other before in an extremely entertaining fight, share a heated ‘beef’ that entices the more casual fan, and have the full force of the Sky Sports machine between them from SSN to Soccer AM to A League of Their Own.
With all that in mind, Hearn told SecondsOut that the fight “could do a million buys, it will certainly do 500,000 or 600,000 buys.”
“500,000 or 600,000 is a conservative number and with a following wind and a great build-up… who knows? It could hit a million buys.”
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The Essex fight boss has previously promoted a pay-per-view involving Frampton – the Belfast boxer’s super bantamweight unification versus Matchroom’s Scott Quigg in Manchester in 2016 – and memories of this, along with other observations, has him believing that the BT Sport pay-per-view will be blown out of the water.
Hearn outlined how “Quigg against Frampton did 220,000 and that was the super fight of the division.”
“You had Quigg and Frampton, unified title, you had Joe Gallagher and you had Shane McGuigan, you had me and Barry [McGuigan], you had Belfast and Manchester, and you had Sky.”
NOTE: A WorldBoxingNews report previously put the pay-per-view buys of Frampton-Quigg at 304,000
“Frampton-Warrington, brilliant fight, but it’s not going to break 100,000 buys, it might struggle to do 50,000.
“That won’t break 100,000 buys. It’s a new platform.”
While he claims that December 22nd was his only option due to venue restrictions, Hearn claims this particular clash is not a major issue for his outfit and he predicts that few people will choose Warrington-Frampton over Whyte-Chisora 2.
The 39-year-old noted that “obviously, if we were concerned about another pay-per-view we’d just go ‘we can’t go on that date’.”
“No disrespect to that fight [Warrington-Frampton] but it’s not on our radar.”
“We may lose 30,000 or 40,000 buys to Warrington-Frampton which is half a million quid so it’s not ideal but, if the shoe was on the other foot, he [Frank Warren] wouldn’t be bothered. We don’t look to clash but sometimes we have no choice.”
It is four weeks tomorrow since Frampton defeated Luke Jackson at Windsor Park but his title challenge of Warrington remains unannounced – although common promoter Warren has claimed “it is on” that night in Belfast and has since assured that the fight will take place before the end of the year.
The December 22nd date which was widely reported last weekend – and which had made logical sense – has yet to be even commented on publically by Frampton, Warrington.
A press conference for the fight was mooted for this week or next but details remain forthcoming.
Watch Danny Flexen’s interview with Eddie Hearn in full below:
