JOSHUA BUATSI has launched a blistering attack on Eddie Hearn after leaving him for Sky Sports.
The 30-year-old was the quiet and respectful man of the light-heavyweight division, after clinching bronze at the 2016 Olympics and climbing to 16-0 as a pro under the Matchroom boss.
But the Ghana-born Croydon ace – who has had his career stalled by injuries and inactivity – was raging when Hearn took his stable to upstart streaming app DAZN in 2021.
And he was even more furious recently when Hearn claimed he had ducked a £1million world title shot against Russian champion Dmitry Bivol, leading him to jump ship back to Sky Sports and their new promoters BOXXER.
At his hometown unveiling, Buatsi fumed: “Matchroom promised me a world title shot over and over again; ‘Beat Ricards Bolotniks (August ‘21) and you’ll get it’. Then it was: ‘Beat Craig Richards (May ‘22) and you’ll get it’.
“But there were always excuses about writing to the WBA and then it never happened.
“I wanted to avoid this topic too but Eddie came out and said I turned down the Bivol fight for £1million.
“But we had a conversation in confidence that he went public with but he only publicised half of the sentence.
“He left out all the caveats they wanted included; the contract extensions and extra fights with Matchroom.
“I took those unmentioned extras as two or three more years on DAZN, two more three years of no publicity and nobody seeing my fights.
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“I thought I might win a world title on a channel that hardly anybody has access to, let alone watches.
“So when Eddie comes out and just says ‘he turned down a world title offer and £1m’ that is not the truth.
“There was a lot more to that offer but he just doesn’t want to tell the public, he just wants to shape their minds.
“It’s unfortunate because most of the public believes what Eddie says but if you were to track and trace everything Eddie says everyday, you would go mad!
“The story changes so frequently that people need to look a bit deeper.
“If you just pick up and notice the pattern of this guy you cannot believe everything he says.”
SunSport has contacted Matchroom and DAZN for a right to reply to Buatsi’s stinging criticism and he is not usually such a controversial or confrontational speaker.
But he has been quietly fuming with his once-sparkling career nosediving under the radar since Hearn took a mega-money deal to leave Sky and take his table around the globe online – and he claims he is not the only one.
We were in a great fight and then I wondered ‘who actually watched that?’ I didn’t even have the app!
Joshua Buatsi on fighting Craig Richards on DAZN
He said: “I understand why other fighters at Matchroom are getting frustrated because I felt that after Craig Richards.
“We were in a great fight and then I wondered ‘who actually watched that?’ I didn’t even have the app!
“If it had been on Sky Sports, all those well-known channels and numbers, it would have been widely watched.
“After being in such a good fight, an all-English fight, I realised that I needed to be more seen in England.
“I want the people of England to be saying to their friends and family ‘tune in to Spy Sports on Saturday, Buatsi is fighting’.
“Even though I am young, I don’t want to be downloading apps and entering bank details every time I want something. Boxing fans need to be able to access the fights and the fighters.
“I didn’t want to have to deal with this stuff really, around the new announcement, but it all links in.
“When Matchroom left Sky and joined DAZN they took all of their fighters with them, the fighters did not get a say, they were not allowed to question the fact that it was a new app that needed time to grow and develop.
“None of that was offered, we were told we had to go.
“My last two fights were good fights against good opponents but not many people saw them. So it’s not a strange idea to see what I am here.
“Fighters work hard to get here, we have the skills and the heart to get here and then we want the recognition for it and I think that is fair.”
Hearn is in Mexico promoting the undisputed super-middleweight fight between superstar champion Canelo Alvarez and Islington’s John Ryder.
But he has claimed on his trip that his company has matching rights for Buatsi’s next bout, suggesting this battle is far from over.
Buatsi said: “I was a free agent who has just now signed with BOXXER so Matchroom will say whatever they want to say.
“Matchroom had matching rights for my next fight and I gave them third-party notice, they matched some parts of it but I stated they must match all of the points and they didn’t.
“They can’t match some of the requests and not all. It doesn’t work like that.
“I told them what the important matters to me were and that they had to match them – because I am the fighter.
“I chose to go with BOXXER because they could provide the certain things that I wanted.”
