Eddie Hearn has delved deeper into the reasons behind not taking Chris Eubank Jr. vs. Conor Benn to a stadium.
The pair are set to meet on October 8 at the O2 Arena in London.
The fight will come at a catchweight of 157 pounds and will be streamed exclusively live on DAZN worldwide and on DAZN Pay-Per-View in the UK & Ireland.
Frank Smith, the CEO of Matchroom Boxing whose girlfriend is Eubank Jr’s sister and who promotes Benn alongside Hearn and Matchroom, said recently that the fight could have gone elsewhere, had the timing been slightly better.
When speaking to the Drive show on talkSPORT, Smith said:
“It probably could have sold out a stadium and it was a shame because of the time of the year that it’s just a little bit late in the year in terms of weather, but we probably could have gone somewhere bigger.”
And now Hearn, who will be alongside Smith at ringside in Saudi Arabia on Saturday to watch Anthony Joshua’s rematch against Oleksandr Usyk as the Brit looks to regain the WBA Super, IBF, IBO and WBO world heavyweight titles at the Jeddah Superdome, has given more detail as to why they didn’t book out a bigger venue for the clash between the sons of former legends Chris Eubank Sr. and Nigel Benn.
While on an Instagram Live session with the undefeated Benn, Hearn stated:
“October’s not a great time [and] we wanted to do it at the O2 [Arena].”
The fight sold out in record time, with reports suggesting that it took just 47 minutes for every ticket to be snapped up to the legacy showdown which will now be witnessed by more than 18,000 people.
Hearn has promoted at Wembley Stadium – the venue everyone said they wanted for the fight – previously, hosting the 80,000-capacity WBA Super and IBF super-middleweight title unification clash between Carl Froch and George Groves at the national stadium before the aforementioned Joshua took to the ring on the turf back in April 2017 as he beat long-time heavyweight ruler Wladimir Klitschko.
Hearn added that ‘number two’ could possibly be a stadium fight:
“It’s going to drive the pay-per-view sales to another level, doing it at the O2 rather than at a stadium – we could do number two at Wembley.”