Matchroom\u2019s Eddie Hearn can help but grin while taking at least some pleasure in Zuffa Boxing struggling as of late, and watching Dana White squirm under the pressure. Check out some of what he had to say as he believes we may in fact be in the end days of Zuffa Boxing as a relevant company in this business.<\/p>\n
Hearn on Dana White\u2019s recent struggles in the boxing business<\/p>\n
\u201cI said when these guys come into boxing, \u2018you are not going to enjoy this.\u2019 Because when you\u2019ve operated like those guys have, with total control and the ability to mute media, to do what you want and just to have people say yes \u2014 boxing is so much different. You\u2019re not going to get your own way, you\u2019re going to get faced with criticism, the media ask much tougher questions, and you will not enjoy it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, that\u2019s the understatement of the year because they have had an absolute disaster, Zuffa. They\u2019ve had the worst start they could ever have in the sport. The UFC business is in terrible decline. Even the ratings for WWE are down. But also, you can see how it\u2019s affecting Dana. He\u2019s forgetting things, he\u2019s getting flustered. And I know I joke about the blood pressure and the capillaries, but it\u2019s for real.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to sound facetious but I\u2019ve almost go to the point where I feel sorry for him now\u2026It\u2019s just done. It\u2019s over. So, I think Zuffa Boxing, I think they might be finished already. They have not done a show in America since July. It\u2019s November next week. They\u2019ve done one show in the UK which, let\u2019s be honest, I don\u2019t mean to be disrespectful, was awful. They\u2019ve got another one coming up which is bang average. Ben Shalom\u2019s shows are 5x better, 10x better than Zuffa shows.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, what are they going to do? For a six month period they are not doing one show in America, and they\u2019re doing two bang average shows in the UK. These guys don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing. I think they\u2019re done. Everyone\u2019s gone quiet. Shakur Stevenson\u2019s left before he\u2019s even had a fight \u2014 that\u2019s a PR disaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expected these guys to be better at what they do. But I didn\u2019t expect it to affect them so badly and for it to start \u2014 you can see the physical breakdown, the mental and emotional breakdown of what is happening when [Dana\u2019s] up there [at the press conferences]. You can see it\u2019s like affecting him. And this is a horrible, horrible business. That\u2019s why I feel almost bad for those guys because I know what it\u2019s like. You have to become really battle worn to it\u2026I was expecting a real fight [out of them], but I think they\u2019re done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matchroom\u2019s Eddie Hearn can help but grin while taking at least some pleasure in Zuffa Boxing struggling as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,711,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-942871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}