Eddie Hearn played down the insults aimed at him from the social media accounts of Turki Alalshikh and The Ring and also the significance of them following the signing of Tom Aspinall to the new Talent Agency of Matchroom.
It was on Thursday when the UFC heavyweight champion was announced as the first signing to the latest arm of Matchroom, and later on Thursday when Alalshikh, directly, and The Ring, quoting Alalshikh, had Hearn in their sights.
Alalshikh has long worked with Hearn and Matchroom but has more recently started working closely with Dana White and Zuffa Boxing, the organisation perhaps on course to emerge as Matchroom’s biggest threat.
Conor Benn’s unexpected departure from Matchroom to Zuffa proved a shock considerably above and beyond that of the start of Aspinall’s association with Hearn. But if it was tempting to interpret the latter as an act of revenge aimed at Zuffa and White – Hearn consistently played down, and convinced when doing so, that being the case – it was also tempting to wonder if Alalshikh had concluded similarly based on the nature of the relevant posts.
“Eddie, don’t worry, I am always here for you,” Alalshikh posted. “And if you call me, unlike Conor Benn, I will answer the phone.”
Considerably more puzzling was the post from The Ring, which read: “While speaking to The Ring, Turki Alalshikh said: ‘Eddie [Hearn], come and put your head on the chest of your father, I will give you a warm hug. The world is filled with evil people.’”
“I just think it’s Turki,” Hearn explained when asked about them on Thursday. “He’s the king of fuckery; he loves it. I texted him straight after. Do you know what I mean? And I think this is also, I said about Dana White – Turki being his daddy. And I think he was asked about that, and he said, you know, ‘Come and see daddy’.
“I mean, right now, our PR score and our reaction from the fans, I’ve never felt so much love. Don’t get me wrong, it won’t last very long. We’ll be a villain soon. But right now, we’re really lapping it up. Turki is always going to do what Turki wants to do. Next week, he’ll probably sign a new deal with him across many different things. And then maybe in a month’s time, he’ll fuck me again. But I don’t mind that. At least you know where you stand. The worst ones are people who put your arm around you, tell you they love you, and then fuck you. Do you know what I mean?”
Considerably more clear than the relevant social media posts was that when he referenced the “worst ones”, Hearn was referring to Benn.
He was also asked whether the formation of the Matchroom Talent Agency meant he remained committed to boxing – the competition is perhaps greater than ever – and he said: “Right now, you’d have to fucking nail me to the floor to stop me being committed to boxing.”
Asked whether their new venture could prove more profitable than promotion, he responded: “There’s no risk here. This is the thing that’s pissed me off about managers for years in boxing. And now I am one in other sports. But I’ve not got to put my money on the line with Tom – millions on the line to do a show and invest in his career, giving him fights, paying for opponents, flying him in, flying him out. We’re just going to bring him in money, and we’re going to make money with him. And that’s what managers in boxing don’t really tend to understand. They come in; they forget the build. But the problem is in the UFC, the build, you know, everything is – again, I’m not going to go too deep into the purses. But I will say, when I talked through Tom Aspinall’s purses, I nearly fell off the fucking chair. Do you know what I mean? Because I know that if that was our business, he’d be making ten times as much money.
“We make a lot of money in boxing. But this is another string of our business. So, it’ll be profitable, I’ll make sure of that. But it’s all a learning curve, you know, and I think that if we did something in MMA, we would have the same margins as we do in boxing. Which is basically 80 per cent of the pot will go to the fighters. In MMA, in the UFC, I think it’s more like 20 per cent of the pot. So we’re happy with those margins, as business. So we would automatically be paying fighters four or five times more, straight away.”
“I said something along the lines of, ‘I don’t want to be in a dick-measuring competition with two grown men’,” said Aspinall. “This is not like point-scoring stuff for me. This is me wanting to get what I think I’m worth. And if I can work with people who I like and they’re going to help me, I will absolutely take it. So this isn’t me getting back at anyone or anything like that. Like Eddie said, it's great timing, but I would have done it anyway if the opportunity was there.
“Dana’s not spoke to me. As far as I’m aware, or at least from my experience, UFC fighters don’t really have a personal relationship with Dana. We go through Hunter Campbell. So I don’t think it’s really his job to reach out.”
