Eddie Hearn on Pat Brown and Matchroom’s new approach

Two large groups of fans made their way through the gentrified Ancoats streets on Tuesday evening.

A few thousand Feyenoord football fans headed up Oldham Road, down Alan Turing Way and to Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium for their Champions League match.

The other group made their way to the very fancy Hallé St Peter’s rehearsal center to celebrate an amateur boxer signing his first professional deal. 

While the Dutch fans will have had a great night watching their team come back from three goals down to snatch a draw with the Premier League champions, Pat “The Bomber” Brown’s friends and family had just as much fun. 

Around 300 of them stood outside on Blossom Street waving flags and sounding off air horns as they waited to get inside the venue for a hastily arranged “Evening with Pat Brown” as the news that the 25-year-old Olympian had committed his future to Matchroom was made official. 

Yes, most of the people who pitched up will have personally known Brown but for an unsigned fighter to drag so many people into the city center on a typically cold grimy, Mancunian night was, to be honest, as surprising as it was impressive.

“Yeah, I just think you’ve just got to keep evolving, haven’t you?” Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn told BoxingScene. “Sometimes things can get a bit samey.

“We could have done a press conference here tonight but everyone does a press conference. Doing ‘An Evening With,’ sometimes it just gives the perception of a bigger night and a bigger occasion.

“But a lot of the questions I’ve had today are, ‘Oh, you’ve really gone for it today with this whole day.’ Yeah, because we want to get behind it. We’re making a big investment in Pat Brown but we want to create that perception as well, that it is what we say it is, which is a major start for British boxing, starting a journey.”

Making such a unique song and dance around Brown’s signing has certainly provided the Mancunian with a big lever with which to get the ball rolling.

By the time the cruiserweight makes his debut in March, possibly at the 2,900 capacity Altrincham Ice Rink, his core fanbase will be in place and the night will have an “I was there” feel to it. That pride will only keep growing — provided he keeps winning. 

In recent weeks, Hearn has mentioned that Matchroom will attempt to freshen things up by applying a different approach to their boxing business next year.

Most of the speculation has centred around what shape a Saturday night event may take but introducing Brown to such a fanfare may be an early sign of the direction things may take outside of the ring. 

Outside of the established and aging names, there is currently a dearth of fighters capable of headlining major British arena shows. Brown’s popularity appears to make him a unique case but the days of fighters being guided to 15 straightforward wins before finding their level and petering out may be coming to an end. 

We should see more and more fighters put on an accelerated path and ushered towards the top. It will be up to them to take advantage of the numerous opportunities that they will be afforded but if they can cope with the expectation and perform, the rewards will be enormous. 

Time will tell how far Brown’s talent will take him but he is certainly going to be given the chance to excel. 

“Not necessarily force it, but just give them the platform to build them as a star. It’s very difficult to build a star when they’re 15-0 and no one’s ever heard of them,” Hearn said.

“Johnny Fisher’s a good example but a lot of young fighters that we’ve got now who are going 6-0, 8-0, 10-0, they’re the guys that are going to be stepping up into the headline act.

“Obviously, Pat will probably headline for his debut just because he’s a freak ticket seller but, beyond that, he’s got a year or so of work till he’s in those kind of fights.”

Brown lost in the first round of this year’s Paris Olympics but his all-action style has always looked better suited to professional boxing. 

Over the past few Olympic cycles, top amateurs have been snapped up and signed to deals almost before the flame was extinguished at the closing ceremony. 

There are too many success stories to list but fighters like Audley Harrison, Amir Khan, James DeGale, Billy Joe Saunders, Anthony Joshua, Josh Taylor and Luke Campbell were major figures and talented fighters who uplifted British boxing for two decades. Their presence on a fight card guaranteed eyeballs and created opportunities for other fighters to impress. 

Although Olympians continue to fare well at title level, the past couple of cycles have provided diminishing returns in terms of their crossover appeal.

Too many have turned over having given their best years to the grueling amateur game while others have failed to catch on with the public in the way their predecessors did despite their talent. The vast majority of fighters headlining shows in Britain these days battled their way up to the top of the bill without the benefit of an elite level amateur background. 

Lewis Richardson’s bronze medal was the only return from this year’s Games in Paris and Hearn applied a more selective approach and has pushed his chips in on the fighter he believes has an incredibly bright future rather than a medal laden past. 

“I think being an Olympian is an incredible achievement but at the same time, there’s a lot of them and they’ve got to be suited to the pros. If you medal, sometimes it gives you a false expectation of your value. ‘I’ve got a medal, so you’re worth X amount.’” he said.

“But give me a guy who has a fighting style that suits the pros. I don’t really care whether they medalled or not and Pat’s the example.

“I mean, if you look at the batch from Tokyo [2020], you’ve got Galal [Yafai] obviously in a massive fight this weekend [with Sunny Edwards]. Pat McCormack’s had his injuries but I think he’s a fantastic fighter as well. Other fighters that come through, even fighters that we don’t represent, Lauren Price came out of there with gold.

“But I think this cycle was probably a little bit more disappointing because we only had Lewis that medalled and, you know, is his style suited to the pros? Is it not? For me, I went with Pat Brown because I think he’s going to be a real entertainer in the professional ring.”

Tuesday night’s event was certainly bold but the overriding feeling throughout — and one that was cemented by speaking to Brown himself — is that he is absolutely typical of somebody you would bump elbows with in the The Millstone pub rather than getting table service at a fancy bar at Deansgate Locks.

I have no idea where Brown sits when he goes to watch his beloved Manchester United but I would be willing to bet that you would be much more likely to find him freezing cold in the Stretford End than behind the glass in an executive box. 

That normality may just prove to be the most sellable, unique thing about Brown. In a hard, working class city like Manchester, that holds far more weight than a tweet scheduled by a PR company or a beautifully produced, glossy video of a fighter wrapping their hands in an empty gym as they read a regurgitated script.

“I think Pat made a really good point about social media stars and [him being] a man of the people. He knows all these people. He don’t sit on his phone in a dark room and tweet all night,” Hearn said.

“He’d rather be out running with them or at Old Trafford. In the pub having a laugh face-to-face or a game of golf and I think that’s the kind of difference. I think everybody that’s built a massive fan base, none of it’s been built on social media.

“Like, tell me a massive ticket seller whose following is dependent upon social media. It’s not the case.

“None of them have built it on social media. They’ve all built it in the cities and Pat’s a good example of that.” 

John Evans has contributed to a number of well-known publications and websites for over a decade. You can follow John on X @John_Evans79