BELFAST, Northern Ireland – Conor Benn is hoping for a welterweight title shot against the winner of the rematch between Lewis Crocker and Paddy Donovan at Windsor Park in Belfast, Northern Ireland, according to Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing, who promotes all three men.
Crocker and Donovan will face each other again, this time for the vacant IBF welterweight title, after a highly controversial ending to their first contest back in March.
Donovan was disqualified after outclassing Crocker for the majority of the contest. He dropped Crocker with a shot after the bell ending the eighth round, with referee Marcus McDonnell ruling the blow a foul and awarding the victory to Crocker. Donovan blamed the crowd noise caused by Crocker’s huge home support for not being able to hear the bell.
Hearn has revealed Donovan wanted the rematch in his home city of Limerick, Ireland.
“I know Paddy Donovan was keen on that,” Hearn said. “Look, it’s a great story. I just think we don’t really know the market there. It’s very risky. We've got 20,000 to fill up at Windsor Park. We're very confident of doing that, down in Limerick we just don’t know. That's the reality.”
The winner of the contest, with the IBF strap around his waist, could land a huge fight with one of the big names in and around 147lbs.
“Certainly if Paddy Donovan wins and you start looking at the names in the welterweight division,” Hearn said. “Like Ryan Garcia, like Devin Haney, like Shakur Stevenson, Teofimo Lopez, Conor Benn. That's fights that you can go down to Limerick with. But we know we're going to do big numbers in Belfast, and that's where we chose to go.”
Hearn has two fighters in the welterweight division, Benn and Jack Catterall, who both are craving a shot at world honors.
“You would always lend yourself to making an in-house fight for a world championship,” he said. “So in this situation, I think firstly Conor Benn is definitely looking at the winner of this fight and of course Jack Catterall, if he's staying at 147, to look at the winner for a world title.”
The controversy in the first Crocker-Donovan encounter, an eliminator for the IBF title, meant that the sanctioning body quickly ordered an immediate rematch. Talks of the rematch seemed to go quiet, but after IBF/WBA titleholder Jaron “Boots” Ennis announced that he would be vacating his titles and moving up to the junior middleweight division, the fight seemed to quickly gain traction again.
“Obviously once the rematch got ordered, the fight was always going to happen,” said Hearn of the delay. “I think if you're Lewis Crocker, you come out of the first fight and you're thinking, ‘I was getting beat in that fight. I had a little bit of a gift, if you like, from Paddy Donovan's mistake. I’m not running it back. Why would I run it back? I’m fighting for the world title.’
“Obviously then it was ordered, the rematch, for a world title eliminator. So at that point it was a hundred percent happening. Obviously with Jaron Ennis moving up, that allowed us to make the first ever all-Irish world championship fight and to do it at Windsor Park. So a massive opportunity for both, a massive fight, and they’re all in it to win it.”
