Eddie Hearn Baking a Cinnamon Encrusted Turki Pie? (Can Canelo and The Saudi Learn To Love?)

Promoter Eddie Hearn is really, really good at two things– darts and falling into piles of money.

The Matchroom Boxing head, who inherited daddy’s promotional company and contacts, parlayed his name value into a reported $1 billion boxing deal with upstart streaming service DAZN (which he drove straight, well, nowhere, really).

And now, the vociferous nepo baby and “look at me” boxing presence has attached himself to yet another money mark in the form of Saudi Arabia’s Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of the Saudi General Entertainment Authority.

Turki, money in hand and money-grubbing lackeys grovelling behind him, has stepped into a bizarre position of quick control in boxing, something akin to some random guy stepping on to a city bus and immediately seizing control of the wheel from the driver.

Hearn, with his innate coin-sniffing abilities, was the first to embrace the chubby would-be boxing dictator and open the door to the sport for him. With rival UK promoter Frank Warren joining hand-in-hand (literally, hand-in-hand), Hearn has pretty much shipped off all of the top level UK boxing scene to Saudi Arabia.

Before his Turki basting began, Hearn had turned himself into a quick friend of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, boxing’s cash cow and increasingly petulant diva.

Turki vs. Canelo

In recent days, Turki and Canelo have had nasty words, publicly, with the Mexican star balking at the Saudi’s way of trying to make a deal with him. Turki, meanwhile, boiled underneath his keffiyeh at the insolence, blasting Alvarez for being “afraid of fighting [David] Benavidez or [Terence] Crawford” and only interested in “easy show-only” fights.

This big-money beef has put Hearn in a tough spot. And like any side piece watching their two sugar daddies go to war in a such a way that it might ruin a future payout, he has stepped in to play peacemaker.

Hearn, The Peacemaker

In a nice, controlled interview for his own Matchroom Boxing YouTube channel, the second-generation rich guy talked up a detente between the warring divas.

“It wasn’t the way Canelo wanted to do that deal,” Hearn said, referring to the stone cold silence Alvarez gave to the possibility of a bout with the Turki-sponsored Terence Crawford. “He wanted to wait until after the Berlanga fight, which, frustratingly for His Excellency, kills the Crawford fight for February because he wants to get that fight made now.”

Hearn would follow with the equivalent of a kept, controlled woman’s “but you don’t know him like I do” lament.

“I know that His Excellency respects Canelo Alvarez. Everyone respects him as a fighter, and he’s a good man,” Hearn added, when asked if Canelo and Turki can ever make good (and, obviously, fill his pocket in the process).

“The way that Turki is operating and the way that he’s doing business is incredible for boxing,” Hearn slurped. “So, those two, at some point, will work together, but only in the fights that His Excellency deems to be the mega-fights…

“You got two very powerful people there. You got one guy in Canelo Alvarez, who likes to make his own decisions, his own thing in his own time, and you’ve got another player in His Excellency, who just wants to make the biggest fights now. Not in three months. No marination. Now.”

It should be noted that Turki’s “now” has resulted in every one of his shows running deeply in the red.

Money vs. Money?

According to a report by Kevin Iole, Alalshikh’s first US effort on August 3, with Terence Crawford vs. Israil Madrimov as the main event, “likely lost more than $10 million” and that “scores of tickets– thousands of them” had to be given away for the mega-hyped event held at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles. [The California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) was unable to provide gate info as requested by this writer to confirm Iole’s report. The promoter of record (Matchroom) had yet to file that information.]

There are also, thus far unsubstantiated, reports that the 6-fight pay-per-view only generated a meager 75k-100k buys in the US.

At the very least, Alvarez MAKES money in boxing.

For Eddie Hearn’s bottom line, none of that really matters. Turki can lose money, as long as he keeps paying Eddie. Canelo can make big bank for himself, only, as long as Eddie can attach himself to an event and siphon some money off for himself (and he’ll be doing just that this coming September 14 when he death-marches his fighter, Edgar Berlanga, into an absolute whupping).

But just imagine if Turki and Canelo could one day join forces.

With Alvarez’s drawing power and Alalshikh’s willingness to sportswash indefinitely, they could REALLY take care of Eddie.