Barry Hearn, the father of Eddie Hearn and founder of Matchroom, has voiced his dismay at Conor Benn’s “horrible and outrageous” decision to leave the promotional outfit and sign a contract with Dana White and Zuffa Boxing.

The news stunned the boxing world last week. A boxer leaving a promoter is nothing new but this seemed like an unbreakable relationship after Eddie guided Benn through a particularly rocky period of his career when he failed two separate drug tests in 2022. Matchroom stood by Benn, even after he was twice provisionally suspended by UKAD during a long and winding legal battle.

It would take three years for Benn to breathe new life into his reputation when he defeated Chris Eubank Jnr last November, seven months after losing their first fight.

“It’s very difficult because boxers do come and go,” Barry Hearn told TalkSport on Monday. “But this wasn’t the average relationship; this was special. Conor was as close as he could have been to being part of the family and for him to make a decision like this, without even a phone call… Eddie, by text, suggested that they meet to discuss it and Conor suggested it was best to go through lawyers. After 10 years of what we’ve gone through with him, I think in my 50-odd years of promoting sport, this is the most horrible, outrageous… I can’t describe the feeling of being let down.”

Eddie Hearn spoke of his own heartbreak over the weekend. Benn has since explained he was made a financial offer that only a “mentally ill person” would turn down. His lone motive, claimed the 29-year-old, was to secure his family’s future.

Barry wished Conor the best of luck. But the manner of Benn’s departure has clearly hurt the veteran promoter.

“It’s a classless way of doing it,” Hearn, 77, said. “You have to bear in mind we took a lot of bullets over this. We took a lot of stick, the reputation of our company, our personal reputations when we went to a guy who had failed a drug test twice and we said, ‘No, we believe in him.’ We stood in his corner, as I would always expect Matchroom to do because we have high standards but those standards have not been reciprocated. That is deeply upsetting, and it is personal. We loved the kid; we’d been with him from day one.”

The split comes in the thick of an increasingly public rivalry between Eddie Hearn and Dana White, making Benn’s decision even harder to swallow.

“I didn’t think he was that kind of boy but maybe we got it wrong with Conor,” Barry went on. “Maybe we took his side and we believed everything he said and maybe we were wrong; I hope not. But it is personally disappointing because it goes beyond money. He’s obviously received a huge offer from Dana White and his team. Dana has got to make some waves in boxing and he’s got Turki Alalshikh’s money behind him so he needs to sign fighters. 

“The team that built Conor Benn is in place and each one of that team would have taken a bullet for him at ringside. You don’t often get that in life and react like this. It’s deeply upsetting.”