Eddie Hearn names top 10 heavyweights ever including Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua then gets trolled by Oscar De La Hoya
EDDIE HEARN has been trolled by boxing legend Oscar De La Hoya after revealing his top ten heavyweights of all time.
The Matchroom Boxing chief was asked for his historical assessment of boxing’s premier division during an appearance on The DAZN Boxing show.
Unsurprisingly, the late, great, Muhammad Ali topped Hearn’s list, with Joe Frazier, Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Sonny Liston and Evander Holyfield following The Greatest.
Hearn placed Riddick Bowe and George Foreman in seventh and eighth place respectively before claiming Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk are the only current fighters capable of rounding out his list.
Former three-weight world champion De La Hoya wasn’t surprised by Hearn’s top ten, which he’s adamant is the result of the Matchroom chief being a “casual” boxing fan.
After seeing a fan query the lack of Joe Louis, Jack Johnson and Larry Holmes in Hearn’s list, De La Hoya replied: “He’s a casual.”
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Hearn and De La Hoya have been embroiled in a war of words since Canelo Alvarez’s defeat to Dmitry Bivol in May.
De La Hoya claimed Hearn got the former pound-for-pound king “beat” by an “irrelevant” Bivol.
The Golden Boy Promotions chief’s comments baffled Hearn, who said: “The thing is, promoters want to make easy fights for their clients because they want to milk as much money as possible.
“I’m a promoter, and I do see the science in that. I’m also a fan.
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“I also want to sit there, if I’m invested in a fight — and sometimes there is quite a lot of financial risk in a fight — I really don’t want to pay big money to see a mismatch.
“I don’t want to sit there and watch a mismatch.
“Sometimes it happens, and there’s nothing we can do about that. Not every fight is a ‘Fight of the Year’ contender.
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“But why do you want to criticise a guy — of course, out of jealousy and the fact that they fell out, there’s a lot of that — but why do you want to criticize a guy for trying to be great?
“You’re basically saying, ‘You shouldn’t have taken that fight because it was too difficult.’ What sort of sport do we live in where we’re criticising fighters for taking a big challenge?”