Pro-motor Mouth

I’ll start by apologising for the appalling pun in the title to the post. I toyed with the idea of ‘Promotional Rescue’ but unless you’re a Stones fan that would have fallen on deaf ears.

I digress…

It seems barely a week goes by without some sort of verbal grenade being thrown by someone either side of the Matchroom Boxing/Frank Warren Promotions divide; and this week is no exception.

Last weekend FWP’s Andy Ayling criticised Eddie Hearn at Matchroom for a plethora of perceived weaknesses; notably not building a fighter’s career and being a great promoter of himself primarily.

Then this week Mr Ayling says that an offer was made to Matchroom for their respective new signings, Scott Quigg and Carl Frampton, to meet in a September show-down.

Made all the more interesting of course due to Frampton’s recent switch from Hearn to Warren.

We’re told – by Ayling – that an offer was made, allegedly Quigg’s biggest ever purse, for the fight and that Eddie replied saying that September was too soon.

I’m really not quite sure where to begin with this. I’ll say firstly that Quigg v Frampton is one of the fights that I would like to see most out of all active British fighters.

In the case of Quigg; who last week signed a deal with Matchroom after terminating his promotional contract with Ricky Hatton, we have a man who has fought just twice in sixteen months.

In the same period, Frampton – under the Matchroom banner – fought four times; twice in front of his adoring Belfast public and each time for a title.

Whether Quigg would be ‘ready’ for a September show is a bit of a moot point, I’m almost certain Scott would take the fight tomorrow though, he is afterall a fighter.

I suspect the main reason why Matchroom and Scott Quigg have passed up the opportunity to fight in September is purely fiscal.

In recent history Frank Warren’s credit rating has taken a bit of a hammering. In the same way that the Greek economy is ‘a bit dodgy’.

Most notably Kevin Mitchell and Ricky Burns have complained of not being paid for various fights.

According to the British Boxing Board of Control’s own regulations, a purse of up to £3,000 must be paid on the night of a fight, with a purse over £3,000 being paid within seven days.

Accusations from messrs Burns and Mitchell are of figures well in excess of ten-times that amount being withheld for months. A court case continues between Warren & Burns.

Not forgetting of course that Frank Warren Promotions was only formed in the demise of the iconic Sports Network being effectively wound up after Warren was defeated in court to the tune of £1.8m by Joe Calzaghe, after money was withheld from the Welshman’s super fight with Bernard Hopkins.

I realise that this may seem like something of an attack on Frank and his company. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As a child of the 80’s I was lucky enough to grow up watching the likes of Nigel Benn, Steve Collins & Chris Eubank knock seven bells out of each other on ITV. All made possible by Frank Warren’s work with Barry Hearn.

Indeed, Warren’s big selling point is TV network BoxNation, which I think is a fabulous service for boxing fans. It shows some tremendous overseas content, though it could help itself by showing shows from other UK promoters like Dennis Hobson or the excellent Dave Coldwell.

The fact is though, if you throw enough mud then some will stick. The outcome of Warren’s court case against Ricky Burns will, I suspect, take several months or even years to be reached; but past history would be enough to put a seed of doubt in the mind of any boxer given an offer to fight on a Frank Warren Promotions show.

Especially in the case of Quigg, someone badly let down by Hatton and who probably doesn’t have a great deal of disposable income laying around.

If you were a plasterer and were given an offer of a weeks work, in recession, by a man with history of allegedly bouncing cheques you’d hardly jump at the chance would you?

Regardless I think I speak for the majority of boxing fans when I say that I hope we do see Quigg v Frampton sooner rather than later.

I fear though that this may go the way of Hatton himself and Junior Witter; which appeared a natural collision course, and of course never happened.

With reference to Andy Ayling’s other major criticism of Eddie Hearn; Eddie has only in the past couple of years resumed the boxing promotion aspect of Matchroom Sport. I can’t quite see what more Eddie can do in that time?

One of his first notable signings was that of Kell Brook, signed of course from Frank Warren, and not many could feasibly argue that his stock hasn’t risen markedly in that time.

Warren’s own big name is that of Welshman Nathan Cleverly; who since beating domestic rival Tony Bellew in 2011 has fought three times.

Bellew has since left Frank to sign for Matchroom, and a subsequent court case was filed and later dropped by Warren.

Tony’s win over Isaac Chilemba last month was his fifth since the loss to Cleverly. At the very least Hearn keeps his fighters busy. Any fighter will tell you they dream of winning titles, but clearly you can’t win a title that you don’t fight for.

With British boxing clearly on the up, any boxing fan would hope that these conflicts are resolved in the ring, rather than the court room.

In the US, the two giant promotional companies of Golden Boy and Top Rank refuse to work together, meaning the world was starved of potentially one of the biggest fights in history, in Floyd Mayweather Jr v Manny Pacquiao.

Although there isn’t a natural fight between two respective FWP and Matchroom fighters at present that is anywhere near as big, there’s a very real possibility that there may be in future.

And we can only hope that we get to see the outcome when there is.