This came from left field. Last night top three middleweight Daniel Jacobs announced he will be working exclusively with HBO and had signed with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing, the dominant promotional outfit in the UK that will be working under the name Matchroom USA in America. Matchroom USA’s first card will be on November 11th on HBO and feature Jacobs in against Luis Arias in the main event.
This is a complicated bit of news to unpack. Up until this signing, Danny Jacobs (32-2, 29 KOs) had been working under the Premier Boxing Champions banner run by Al Haymon. Haymon is not a promoter, however. Instead he is a manager. It is illegal under the Ali Act for someone to both manage and promote a fighter, so PBC cannot be the promoter. Instead Haymon has his fighters not have a promoter at all. They essentially sign one off deals with minor outfits for shows that are really promoted by Haymon even if they technically are not. From the outside it looks like a subversion of the law, but I am no legal expert and it has held up so far.
This signing exposes a weakness in the system as any of his fighters can leave at any time as he doesn’t have promotional deals tying them down. Yet, I don’t expect to start to see an exodus. Jacob’s case is very specific as the two money fights available to him are not available through the PBC banner, those being a rematch with Gennady Golovkin or a fight with Canelo Alvarez. Both of those two fight exclusively on HBO, a network the does not work with PBC. Second, HBO is trying to secure a future in the sport after losing so much with Top Rank leaving for ESPN. That made them eager to get this done with Matchroom and Jacobs.
Finally, Eddie Hearn has been talking for years about expanding stateside and here he is finally doing it. Reportedly his American promotional outfit will be called Matchroom USA and open an office in New York. Hearn has said that he is only going to sign a few more fighters at first and look to put on four to six shows on the American east coast next year.
His first show will take place on HBO and pit Jacobs in with Luis Arias (18-0, 9 KOs) at the Nassau Coliseum. Arias is coming off a dominant, career best performance over Arif Magomedov on the Andre Ward/Sergey Kovalev II PPV, but this is a massive leap up from that. Heavyweight Jarrell Miller (19-0-1, 17 KOs) is being discussed for the co-feature, but he still needs a dance partner.
