Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn makes champions out of boxers who ordinarily would never be world champions.
That’s the view of former Kell Brook trainer Dominic Ingle. The Sheffield coach admitted when speaking to Boxing King Media regarding the Beterbiev vs Smith debacle.
Hearn made a big deal of Artur Beterbiev submitting an ‘atypical finding’ in his VADA test in December, weeks before the Callum Smith fight. An ‘atypical finding’ alarms VADA to give that fighter extra testing in the failsafe protocol.
Beterbiev passed all subsequent testing with flying colors. However, this didn’t stop Hearn from asking why the media isn’t looking into Beterbiev as a potential cheat.
Over the past few years, Hearn’s boxers have failed the most of any promotional company in the world. That’s a fact and one Hearn feels hard done by.
During Beterbiev vs Smith fight week, he said that if the situation had happened to a Matchroom fighter, the media would be all over it.
However, the difference between Beterbiev and Matchroom fighters like Conor Benn, Dillian Whyte, and Jarrell Miller is that they all failed tests. Beterbiev didn’t.
Ingle addressed this in his conversation and added that Hearn knows how to stir up those difficult questions.
Regarding Smith and several other fighters Hearn has promoted, Ingle says many of them wouldn’t have become world champions without guidance from the Essex man.
Eddie Hearn makes smart moves for champions
“Eddie Hearn has been very good over the years of making world champions of people that probably should never be world champions,” Ingle told Boxing King Media.
“For me, one of the UK’s last legitimate world champions is Carl Froch. He was a world champion for a long time. He had some tremendous fights with everybody. Froch got beat by the best one in the division [Andre Ward].
“Now you look at Callum Smith. He was in the Super Six Series [World Boxing Super Series] and won the title, but he didn’t hold onto it for long.
“You have [Lawrence] Okolie, who was a world champion who probably should never have been a champion. So Eddie has got them to these positions, but to maintain them, you have to be a very, very good fighter.
“You must be a Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao type of fighter. Ricky Hatton [not promoted by Hearn] was a good fighter and a legitimate world champion. Still, when he came up against Mayweather and Pacquiao, he wasn’t even in the gang.
“Maybe that was the lifestyle outside the ring. Beterbiev lives, sleeps, and breathes boxing. He is a good athlete.
“Can that be said about Callum Smith? Does he live every day as a boxer? Does he party? Is he in the gym 364 days of the year? I have seen it myself in fighters like Billy Joe Saunders, Kel Brook, and Naseem Hamed, who are fantastic fighters, but it’s about consistency.
“If everybody is a good fighter, what will separate the weak from the chaff? It’s the ones who live the better life outside the ring,” he concluded.
Read all articles and learn more about the author, experienced boxing writer, and World Boxing News Editor Phil Jay.
