IN COMPARISON TO the gold rush for tickets back in May, Eddie Hearn admits that Katie Taylor’s rematch with Chantelle Cameron at the same venue “crept” towards an 8,000 sellout.
The reason is simple: Hearn acknowledges that tickets for his 3Arena show this Saturday are “very expensive”.
The general admission (€80) and VIP (€1,000) tickets were snapped up quickly from their release on 27 September but, over the past month, the last 400 or so mid-range tickets weren’t for budging.
“That’s €500 a ticket,” Hearn says. “It’s a lot of money.”
They’re gone now, anyway. Only a few of the undercard boxers’ personal tickets remain.
Hearn’s justification for the pricing (down from €100-€2,500 for the original bout) is also straightforward: on an island of 7 million people, and with the help of a couple hundred fight-night tourists from Britain, 8,000 tickets were always going to find homes before first bell.
On Saturday, Matchroom will again churn a seven-figure sum at the gate, probably just shy of their €3m haul last time out. That will go a long way towards their turning a profit on a highly expensive event.
And it is for these reasons that Northampton native Cameron (18-0, 8KOs), who in May ruined Taylor’s long-awaited homecoming to strengthen her own rule over boxing’s light-welterweight division, must once more carry her crown across the Irish Sea. The 32-year-old is the deserving champion in boxing terms but is again the invading antagonist in a multi-million-euro business equation.
Cameron and her trainer Jamie Moore will lay plain this week that they’ve been dealt a bum hand in having to return to Taylor’s home country having beat her the first time around. In reality, Cameron and her team won the lottery as soon as Taylor (22-1, 6KOs) first called her out on Instagram in an attempt to salvage her homecoming from the wreckage of Amanda Serrano’s withdrawal back in the spring.
“So, listen, these girls are making a fortune, right?” Hearn says. “And good luck to ‘em. They deserve every penny.
“But to do that, you have to hit a certain number on the gate. The only place where we can hit that number is in Dublin.
It’s all very well saying, ‘This should be in Northampton’ or ‘This should be in England.’ But at the end of the day, you want the money? You’ve gotta let us make the money to deliver for you. If you want half your purse, go to England.
“We had the right to stage it where we could deliver those numbers, so that’s why we’re back in Dublin.
“And by the way, let’s also look around and see the draw [that Katie is in Ireland],” continues Hearn, scanning the thronged atrium of Liffey Valley Shopping Centre where champion and challenger are about to run through their public workouts. “We can’t just…
Hearn pauses.
“Chantelle Cameron is rising to a new level. But you don’t just get to Katie Taylor levels in six months. This has been built across her lifetime.
It’s amazing when you come here. I’ve never seen anything like it. Kids. Grandparents. Not even Anthony Joshua… I don’t see this for ‘AJ’, in terms of the kids with their Irish t-shirts on, with their Katie Taylor flags. It’s another level.
“You look at the turnout here, start seeing the coverage, start seeing the head-to-head (promo shoot) yesterday, you start to realise how massive this fight is for Katie and for women’s boxing — but really for the career of Katie Taylor.”
That Taylor pulled the trigger on an immediate rematch with Cameron following her first professional defeat will have surprised nobody, albeit it brings the hint of a wince out of her promoter.
“Tactically, from a business perspective, probably a bad decision,” Hearn smiles ruefully.
“Come back down (to lightweight/135lbs), fight Amanda Serrano. Or come back to Dublin, fill it up still against a lesser opponent, drag it out a little bit…
“You could have offered her 10 times the money to fight someone else and she would never have taken it.”
Ultimately, it is for such conviction that Taylor has become cherished in her home country to the point that she has twice in the space of six months sold out the country’s biggest indoor arena even allowing for her promoter’s exorbitant ticket prices.
But every sportsperson’s pulling power is mostly predicated on their winning. For a 37-year-old boxer, consecutive blemishes on her CV will all but spell the end of Taylor’s time as a top-1% prizefighter and commercial attraction.
“I mean, like, you know Katie,” Hearn says. “It’s very difficult to have the conversation about ‘if you lose…’ And I would never have that conversation with her.
“But if you lose at home, back-to-back… I know you can say, ‘Yes, but it is at 140.’ If Katie loses, she’s still the champion down at 135 — but she won’t care. She won’t even feel like a champion.
Don’t forget this is the third consecutive seven-figure gate that Katie has had: Madison Square Garden, now the two here. She is a huge draw but if you keep getting beat, you won’t be.
Hearn adds: “I haven’t seen Katie this week because she only gets in from Boston today (Wednesday) but all the word is that media obligations are being cut a little bit shorter. I get it. Honestly, last time she did so much. I think this time around she’ll say ‘no.’ She’ll say ‘I don’t care.’”
A heartbroken Taylor declined to speak to media altogether following her defeat to Cameron six months ago, instead exiting the 3Arena at the first opportunity.
Hearn recalls a brief exchange with Taylor with the dust having barely settled on the ring canvas, and especially the Bray woman’s response when her promoter sheepishly broached the rematch clause in her contract:
We were in a lift and I sort of said to her, ‘We’ve to exercise the rematch next week if you want to, but we’ll have a chat– and she’s like, ‘Exercise it.’
“She’s been so driven to win this fight,” Hearn adds. “One thing is for sure: she will be levels above where she was last time — but so will Chantelle Cameron.
“Tell you what: I went up to see Chantelle in training camp. She thinks she’s winning this fight by stoppage, 100%. She thinks she didn’t so that well last time, so I think Katie is right up against it.”
If Taylor can pull off what must be described as an unlikely victory at this stage of the game, meanwhile, Hearn still has tentative plans to take her to Ireland’s biggest stage of all.
“I mean, the trilogy could be massive. You’ve got the rematch with Amanda Serrano.
If she wins on Saturday night, I want to deliver Croke Park because if she comes through this fight her popularity will go to another level.
“We’ll see. I just feel like, for me, if she wins… Say this fight is better than Taylor-Serrano, right? And I believe it’ll be at those levels. And she wins a decision… Who knows?”
Is Hearn sure he wants to reopen that can of worms, mind?
“Why not?”
