Hearn: “Chukhadzhian`s Promoters Made a Crazy Offer”

Matchroom Boxing’s head promoter, Eddie Hearn, who represents IBF welterweight champion Jaron Ennis (32-0, 29 KOs), explained why his company lost the purse bid for a fight against Ukrainian boxer and Ready to Fight ambassador Karen Chukhadzhian (24-2, 13 KOs).

“We’re running a business. Considering the amount we offered, we’ve already made a huge investment in this fight. Plus, Ennis has minimum requirements.

People don’t understand purse bids. In the fighter’s contract, there are minimums, and sometimes the offer is below that because you don’t want to overpay the opponent, and Chukhadzhian is already getting paid excessively.

Financially, for us, this is already a disaster, but we decided to support the fight. Let’s try to get the deal done. His promoters made a crazy offer. I reached out to them and asked, ‘Listen, what do you want to do? Where do you want to stage this fight? Do you have the resources for it, and do you want to collaborate with us?’ And we made a deal to do it together.

The reason we went ahead with this fight is because I had a very candid conversation with Jaron Ennis, who told me: ‘My dream in boxing is to unify the titles and win all the belts in this division.’ He’ll later do it in super welterweight and then middleweight as well,” Hearn said in an interview with Fight Hub TV.

The rematch between Karen Chukhadzhian and Jaron Ennis is set for November 9 in Ennis’ hometown of Philadelphia, USA. In their first fight, Ennis won by unanimous decision.