UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall is back in the news, and this time it’s not some dreary story about how bad his injured eyes are. Following an announcement that he’d hired Matchroom Boxing’s Eddie Hearn as his new manager, Hearn went ahead and held a big press conference in London to push his client and remind everyone what it looks like when a fighter is actually being promoted.
“Unbelievable turnout,” Hearn said in a video posted to Aspinall’s YouTube channel. “If you look down there, Tom Aspinall is swamped with media like some kind of global superstar we all know that he is. And in 24 hours, his profile is bigger than it’s ever been before. So get ready for the big return for one of the biggest stars in the game.”
Hearn has used his promotional swagger in the past to rehab the reputations of Anthony Joshua of Conor Benn, both of whom are making eight-figure paydays now. Benn famously left Hearn to sign with UFC’s boxing sister promotion Zuffa, allegedly for a $15 million one-fight deal. Now we’re wondering if Hearn plans to try and extract a similar figure out of UFC for his new client Tom Aspinall.
Eddie certainly implied there’d be changes to how much Aspinall makes if UFC wants to keep him following the last two fights on his current contract.
“When I talked through Tom Aspinall’s purses, I nearly fell off the f–king chair,” Hearn said. “Do you know what I mean? Because I know if that was our business, he’d be making 10 times as much money.”
“His return is gonna be massive when it comes. And as an organization, they need him. Forget he needs the UFC. He actually don’t need the UFC now, but they need him because they need heavyweight stars. [They need] stars full stop. And he’s a young man that goes in there and f–king entertains.”
The U.K. media showed up in a big way for the presser, with major outlets for the top news organizations out in force.
“For us, it sends us into a frenzy because we’re trying to figure out what’s gonna happen next,” Daily Mail’s Charlotte Daly said. “The rumors are all whether Tom was moving to boxing, and that was the conversation. He’s obviously said today that is not the case, potentially at the end of his career.”
“But yeah, there’s so many eyeballs on this, a lot of interest in what this means going forward, what it means for UFC. Is it gonna increase the purses there? So I think only good things can come from it.”
That’s pretty optimistic, and we assume the Daily Mail hasn’t carefully followed the stories of other major UFC fighters who believe they deserved more than what the established promotional payscale offers. This time, though, the fighter in question has Eddie Hearn in his corner, and Eddie won’t allow the press to ignore the situation if negotiations don’t move forward as they should.