Frank Warren fumes at Eddie Hearn over pay-per-view schedule clash

Frank Warren claims the “disrespectful” and “stupid” decision to run the Dillian Whyte v Dereck Chisora heavyweight rematch on the same night as Carl Frampton’s challenge of IBF featherweight champion Josh Warrington will mean major financial losses for all four fighters.

The long-mooted news Matchroom would run a PPV rematch between the heavyweights had most preaching the fans were the biggest losers.

However, while Warren admits it does split the audience, he also points out it’s a no win situation for the fighters as  both set of bill toppers pocket’s will also be hit.

Pay-per-view has long been the pinnacle, financially, for any fighter and Hearn has regularly explained how topping a Sky Box Office bill can generate a life changing purse for fighters involved. The fighters get the lion’s share of the revenue from buys and it seems Warren, via BT Sport, was running the same system.

With two big fights on the same night, neither fight night will generate as much income as they could if they were the only card running on the night.

Warren, who it was reported last night is facing bankruptcy, is furious at Matchroom’s decision to go on a date he announced first, although Hearn has stressed he had no option in terms of venue as he was not compromising on his desire for Whyte-Chisora II to take place in a 20,000+ seater arena..

The man who promotes Katie Taylor, Ryan Burnett and Jono Carroll also stressed he believes casuals will still flock to the heavyweight match up and, in that regard, believes his fighters will still earn.

Indeed, the Matchroom boss has predicted that his offering could outsell Warren’s TWENTY TIMES.

While not to this degree, most, including Frampton, agree that the heavyweight rematch, with all the additional baggage and a more established platform, will far outsell the nine stone world title fight.

Warren is not happy and stated in his weekly column for the Metro that “it’s ridiculous, it really is.”

“It’s disrespectful to the fans. Manchester City and Manchester United don’t play at the same time in the Premier League, do they?” Warren rhetorically asked as he continued blasting the move.

“It’s a stupid situation and I can’t see who wins out of this. You just split an audience, and the boxers will lose out on pay-per-view buys.”

“That’s a major loss for all four boxers involved. What we have in Warrington v Frampton is a clash between two of the very best in the world at their weight class and that is really becoming our mantra with PPV on BT Sport Box-Office.”

Warren, who promotes Frampton and has run four massive cards in Belfast over the last 12 months, also took time to question Sky and Matchroom’s PPV approach.

The Queensberry boss, who put Amir Khan’s WBO Inter-Continental rankings title clash with a then-unknown Colombian Briedis Prescott on Sky Box Office, seemed to suggest he would now only use pay-per-view format for world title fights and argued Sky and Hearn are letting down their audience by charging extra for ‘second tier’ bouts.

“What we’re not about is putting second tier, inconsequential fights on PPV for the sake of it. It is disrespectful to Josh and Carl and, to a certain extent, Whyte and Chisora, who are being used,” the veteran promoter continued.

“While Whyte-Chisora is a decent fight, Sky customers need to ask what they are getting for their subscriptions if this event is deemed to be PPV.”

“It wasn’t so long ago that Hearn pledged to have a world title fight on regular Sky pretty much every week, but I believe the last male to fight for a world title on a [non PPV] UK show was over a year ago,” Warren added, setting perimeters to exclude Katie Taylor’s title defence with Jessica McCaskill.

“Since we announced our deal with BT [almost two years ago] we have put on 12 world title fights, with half a dozen interims, with big stadium shows including Fury, Frampton and Warrington. All on linear subscription TV.”