The Matchroom promoter discusses what he thinks to be boxing’s most significant fight.

Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn spoke with our pals at Fight Hub TV about his declaration that the trilogy battle between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin is far more important than a prospective undisputed unification fight between Errol Spence and Terence Crawford.

Obviously, such a remark may raise some eyebrows, but Hearn provides his viewpoint as a businessman in the sport and explains his reasons.

Canelo vs. GGG 3 will be a greater bout than Spence vs. Crawford.

“When I talk about size, I talk about revenue. So that’s it, really. It’s at least — at least — four times bigger, maybe more. But I’m just talking about revenue. If you said to hardcore fight fans ‘what’s the better, bigger fight’ I think it could be (fairly split) because that’s a different world. But you’re talking about two global icons in the sport, two legends of the sport, worldwide names, versus two brilliant American fighters that no one really knows, like outside of boxing fans in America.”

“When I say that, it’s not offensive to the fight, I’m just giving you the financial facts of what is bigger, basically.”

If devoted fans aren’t normally the ones earning income anyway

“No, they’re not. The casual fans are the ones who buy — that’s how you have a big pay-per-view. But boxing fans probably account for between a hundred to two hundred pay-per-views. That’s why when you talk about Errol Spence, they say his biggest pay-per-view is 300,000. I don’t actually believe that but if it was, that’s as big as it gets against Mikey Garcia, I believe that was.”

“Terence Crawford, I don’t think has done more than 100, 150 (thousand) tops. So that just goes with my argument. Hardcore fight fans will buy Errol Spence and Terence Crawford pay-per-views. How do you get a million buys? How do you get 1.2 million buys? Canelo Alvarez just did 600,000 against Bivol, 700,000 against Plant. These are consistent numbers, he’s a freak in terms of his draw power.”

“So it’s not really about who comes from where, it’s just that one guy does these numbers and another guy does these numbers. And I’m just telling you that I know the money that’s generated for all these fights and Canelo-GGG is miles bigger than that fight. Again, not what’s a better fight, which one do you want to see more — I’m just telling you financially which one’s bigger.”

According to Leonard Ellerbe, Canelo’s last bout barely drew 120,000 buys against Bivol.

“120 is about the number that it did off DAZN. And that was actually stated in the message, in the tweet. It did 120,000 buys off platform. People got to realize, this was a DAZN pay-per-view. Off-platform is just other random platforms that were engaged during that fight. The bulk of the pay-per-views were on DAZN. Speak to DAZN, did over 600,000 buys, a huge success. We hope (Canelo vs GGG 3) does a million. And what that will do is it will show us this is a sustainable pay-per-view platform, not what we intend or want it to be, but the fact that we have the ability to do success pay-per-views on the platform is great for us because we can keep fights like this for the fans on DAZN.”

On the scale of Spence vs Crawford being unquestioned, and if that isn’t enough to pique the curiosity of casual fans,

“With this fight (Canelo vs GGG), you put these guys two together — it’s massive. It’s a million buys or thereabouts. You put those other guys, you have to engage the casual fans. Every boxing fan will buy Spence vs Crawford, 250-300 thousand. How do you get it to a million?

“If you engage that market through great promotion, through a little bit of bad blood, through engaging linear platforms like ESPN and FOX and helping it growing, I believe that fight could get to five or six hundred thousand buys. But not really beyond. But it’s a brilliant fight between two brilliant fighters. It’s just that the casual fan doesn’t know much about them, so you got a lot of work to do. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it — if they get together and start rolling around on the stage, and the build-up is great and gets it right FOX, gets it right on ESPN, it’s a big fight with big pay-per-view, but you’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Why should we anticipate Canelo vs. GGG 3 to be a huge success since we’ve already watched this bout twice?

“Why do people want to see this fight? The first two were amazing. The first one was disputed, a lot of people thought Gennadiy won the second one — all these reasons. You’ve just seen two Fights of the Year, right. A lot of people feel like Gennadiy Golovkin won both fights, especially the first fight, or the second fight, or whatever you want to say. So why not do it again? You’ve got the best of 160 against the best of 168, in my opinion…bad blood, they can’t stand each other, stylistically it’s an absolute war. So you can’t ask me why would we want to see it again when it’s one of the greatest fights that can be made in the sport.”