Eddie Hearn would “absolutely” like to re-sign Carl Frampton
With rumours circulating around the future of Carl Frampton, Matchroom boss Eddie Hearn has admitted that he would be interested in re-signing the Belfast star.
‘The Jackal’ saw his Belfast homecoming last weekend agonisingly fall through at the last moment as prospective opponent Andres Gutierrez suffered a freak injury the night before the fight at the SSE Odyssey Arena.
It would then emerge that Frampton [23(14)-1(0)] had resigned from his position as a director of Cyclone Promotions – leading to rumours that he has parted with the outfit completely and, when mixed with the injury to Gutierrez and the fact he missed weight for the WBC featherweight title eliminator, conspiracy theories.
While it would most rationally seem that the three issues are completely unrelated, the status of Frampton’s position within Cyclone Promotions still remains in question.
Rumours throughout Sunday night and early Monday that the 30 year old had rejoined Matchroom were promptly dismissed by the English promotional outfit as being “nonsense.”
Hearn himself reaffirmed the fact that there has been no contact whatsoever with Frampton, and that he has “no idea” what is the Irish boxer’s current standing – however the Essex promoter would love to sign the Tiger’s Bay featherweight once again.
Speaking to IFL TV, Hearn outlined how “all I saw was that he resigned from Cyclone. Not my business.”
“I can’t imagine it’s a great place, whatever is going on there, and it’s got nothing to do with me, it’s none of my business.”
“I saw all the rumours, ‘you signed Frampton,’ my phone was going mad, Irish fans, Irish media, [asking] ‘when are you going to announce it?’ – I was in New York at the time!”
When questioned on whether he would like to have Frampton back with Matchroom, Hearn admits he would be interested at the prospect.
Frampton won the European super bantamweight title under the Matchroom banner in February 2013, but there would be an acrimonious split afterwards as promotional disagreements between manager Barry McGuigan and Hearn led to a parting of ways that Summer.
“There’s been no conversations for Carl Frampton to rejoin Matchroom – would I be interested? Absolutely,” said the 38 year old
“Will we have conversations? I don’t know really, I don’t know how he [Frampton] feels about that” he added, perhaps referencing the animosity in the build-up to the Scott Quigg unification.
While he would stress that he knows nothing of the situation, Hearn reasoned that there could may well be problems in the camp.
Hearn hypothesised how “there’s been no statement, it’s been pure silence, which is never good in a situation like this.”
“If I was Barry McGuigan or Carl Frampton, I’d get you [IFL TV] in for an hour – although it might be very sensitive what’s happening, you don’t know.”
“Maybe everything’s absolutely fine, maybe he just missed the weight, made a mistake, maybe the geezer [Gutierrez] did fall over in the shower, maybe he’s just resigned for Cyclone for some sort of accounting reasons. That’s very possible.”
“Or maybe they’ve had a falling out and the shit’s hit the fan, who knows?”
Under the guidance of Cyclone, Frampton would win and defend the IBF 122lbs title before unifying with the WBA belt against Matchroom’s Quigg. The Ulsterman would then move up to win and lose the WBA featherweight belt in successive fights with Leo Santa Cruz before the drama of last weekend.
Watch Eddie Hearn’s interview with IFL TV in full below:
