Eddie Hearn

When a pic­ture of Rio Ferdin­and on the cover of Men’s Health flashed up on Eddie Hearn’s phone, the box­ing pro­moter’s heart sank. Ferdin­and looked sleek, mus­cu­lar and in the shape of his life. ‘Fuck­ing hell, man,’ the 46-year-old texted Ferdin­and. ‘I’ve got to fol­low you!’ Hearn smiles at the memory. ‘But at the same time, I think, “I’m not an ath­lete.” I look at Rio, who’s in much bet­ter shape than me – not, like, a mil­lion times – and I think, “Yeah, but he spent his whole life train­ing, play­ing foot­ball for Manchester United, doing all this strength and con­di­tion­ing,”’ Hearn adds. ‘I’m just on the blag, at press con­fer­ences, eat­ing out every night. That’s why I say it’s one of my biggest achieve­ments, being able to get in decent shape. I’m not an ath­lete, I’m not a sports­man. I’m just a busi­ness­man and an entre­pren­eur who’s got a lot on his plate. I’ve never been able to crack it and I’m not say­ing I’ve cracked it. But I look alright. I feel pretty good.’

To say Hearn has a lot on his plate is something of an under­state­ment. The sub­ject of a smash Net­flix doc­u­ment­ary and CEO of Mat­ch­room Sport, Hearn is one of the main drivers in the resur­gence of Brit­ish box­ing. Heir to his father Barry’s empire, he’s a man on a mis­sion. Arriv­ing just after 9am for his Men’s Health shoot, Hearn briefly steps out of his car only to tell the await­ing crew, ‘I’ll be three minutes – I’m on an import­ant call,’ before dis­ap­pear­ing back into his all-black Defender.

In the middle of the pre­vi­ous night, the phone had rung and it was box­ing power­brokers in Las Vegas. A couple of hours and sev­eral phone calls later, a deal had been struck. Four hours after that, Hearn was at Mat­ch­room’s HQ in Essex for the shoot, but that doesn’t mean the work stopped. There’s always something else; another deal to broker, fight to organ­ise or goal to aim for. And Hearn approaches his fit­ness as he does his busi­ness.

‘I always feel like there’s more and I never quite feel sat­is­fied with what we’ve done,’ Hearn says. ‘But this is prob­ably the proudest thing that I’ve done for myself, even though I’ve got a long way to go.’

As proof, Hearn shares a before photo of him­self look­ing pale and a bit bloated.