Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn rivalry: Why promoters hated one another for therefore lengthy

Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn have been rivals for over a decade but they’ve put their differences aside to put on this weekend’s 5v5 event in Saudi Arabia.

But they weren’t always on speaking terms like they are now and spent years striking verbal blows from afar as fights between their promotional companies fell by the wayside.

Now they finally pit their stables together so Daily Star Sport takes a look at the rivalry through the years which kept the family businesses bickering for so long.

Warren and Hearn talk about their own experiences in dealing with Queensberry and Matchroom ahead of the 5v5 show.

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Frank Warren

Warren admits he was happy to help the Hearns enter the boxing world but there were times he wished he hadn’t.

And despite being on good terms with Eddie, the drive to beat him in tonight’s 5v5 is as red hot as if they were still enemies. Especially as defeat could see him dressed up as a butler. More on that later.

The Warren and Hearn rivalry has been bubbling for years. Bitter would be an understatement at times over the last few decades.

Queensberry and Matchroom were always fighting. Just rarely in the ring. But they worked together many years ago. Frank and Barry that is.

“We were partners for a time, “ said Warren. “We did the breakaway snooker, him, us and IMG. I negotiated the TV deals, he did the promotion about snooker because I knew sod all about snooker. That lasted about a year.”

It was around then that Barry visited Frank at his office. The pair had plenty in common. They were both from working class backgrounds. Warren had worked the pubs and clubs with his cigarette machines and pool tables. Hearn was an accountant for a rival.

“I remember Barry came to my office when he started out promoting and we helped him out,” said Warren. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done!”

Then in 1989, Hearn saw his chance. When Frank was shot outside a London theatre by an unknown gunman, Barry pounced. “When that attempt was made on my life, he got into boxing properly and Chris Eubank came along and ITV opened the door and let them in,” said Warren.

“A couple of my fighters jumped ship because they thought I was finished in boxing, which I wasn’t because we came back and in the end most of them came back.”

Over the years, they swapped fighters and TV deals but battled bitterly until Barry started to move more into snooker and darts.

That was until his son Eddie got the bug after working with Audley Harrison 14 years ago. Eddie wasn’t shy as he arrogantly declared he was taking over. It often angered Warren. Now he sees what his younger rival – 28 years separate them – was doing.

It was similar to what Warren did to break the ‘cartel’ of promoters which ran the sport before Warren infiltrated. “You have to bang the drum and claim you’re going to change the sport,” said Warren. “I did that as well. It was the same mantra I had.”

The pair shared lunch this week and exchanged plenty of pleasantries. Before last year they’d never even met.

“He’s passionate about boxing,” added Warren. “He’s more passionate about boxing than his dad ever was.”

Boxing may finally be common ground after the intervention of Saudi money and Turki Alalshikh, the sport’s biggest powerbroker but so is their will to win. There’s been some friendly bets made ahead of tonight’s 5v5 event. Then there’s the forfeits.

They were for Matchroom’s CEO Frank Smith and Queensberry’s event manager Andy Ayling but Warren might have to step in.

“If we win, Frank Smith has to come to my office as a french maid and make tea for the day,” he said. “The other is that if my team loses, Andy Ayling has to go to their office dressed as a butler and work for the day.

“He’s now saying he doesn’t want to do that. So maybe I’ll have to. We better win!”

EDDIE HEARN

The phone once rang in the Hearn household and it was the police looking to know Barry’s whereabouts on the night of November 30, 1989.

Frank Warren had been shot outside a theatre in London. Barry had more than an alibi. He was sat in the front row at the Guild Hall in Preston watching Steve Davis in a snooker tournament. They could check the footage.

But the fact law enforcement bothered to call showed just how big a rivalry there was back then. Hearn Jnr wasn’t there for that particular phone call but there were many he was as a child while his father began to build the Matchroom sporting empire.

“My life growing up as a kid, my dad was away a lot with work, as I am now from my kids, it comes with the territory, but when he was at home I wouldn’t leave his side,” said Hearn Jnr, 44. “That included playing sport but it also was sitting in the study with him waiting for him to come off the phone.

“Those arguments would be with Don King, Bob Arum and Frank Warren. To be honest, Frank Warren was the enemy in our household. They didn’t get on.

“My dad always said I would like Frank’s company socially but ‘you don’t do business with him’. That was embedded with me.”

So when Eddie began to make his own mark in the sport back in 2010, battle lines were drawn. “When I got into boxing I never thought ‘I have to stick it on Frank Warren’ but my mentality is the same as my dad’s,” said Hearn, who was a cocksure figure determined to shake things up.

“We want to win, we want to be the best and anyone that is in our way then we are going to f***ing steamroll them. I went in with that kind of aggression.”

Now a little older and, thanks to the Saudi money on offer and the work of Turki Alalshikh, the sport’s biggest powerbroker, Hearn can see the similarities between himself and the man 28 years his senior

“When I started off it was immaturity and trying to break the mould,” said Hearn. “I had to ride the wave of the pressure, the criticism, the legal letters, all that kind of stuff that tries to break you.

“There were times I was thinking ‘What the f*** am I doing in this game? I don’t need this’ but it also appealed to me. The excitement of taking on Frank was something that drove me.”

For 40 of Hearn’s years, the pair never even spoke. Except through legal letters and interviews to bicker about fighters and bouts that often never happened.

Not until late last year did Eddie and Frank ever meet. The money and opportunities from Saudi seemingly too good to turn down for the future of both Queensberry and Matchroom.

But that doesn’t mean they’re no longer sporting rivals. It’s why another phone call this week hit home to Eddie about why coming out on top of tonight’s 5v5 event is important.

“My dad phoned me and said ‘we are going to win this aren’t we?’”. As if to remind him that family honour is on the line.

THE FIGHTS

Queensberry v Matchroom

Zhilei Zhang v Deontay Wilder (Captain)

Daniel Dubois v Filip Hrgovic

Nick Ball v Raymond Ford (WBA featherweight title)

Hamzah Sheeraz (Captain) v Austin ‘Ammo’ Williams

Willy Hutchinson v Craig ‘Spider’ Richards

1 point for winner on cards, two for a knockout victory, double points for captain win

Watch ‘5 vs 5: Queensberry vs Matchroom’ live from Riyadh on TNT Sports Box Office from 7pm on Saturday. For more info: tntsports.co.uk/boxoffice