Eddie Hearn owes at least a part of his fame to social media, but that does not mean the boxing promoter thinks it is necessarily a good thing.
The Matchroom Boxing supremo has a Twitter following of 1.1million, and a parody account dedicated to him (‘No Context Hearn’) boasts a whopping 360,000. His willingness to engage with fans and ability to take criticism with a smile on his face has made him a huge name globally.
Eddie Hearn on social media
The 44-year-old, who promotes two-time world heavyweight king Anthony Joshua among others, admits that some of social media is ‘toxic’, and that he sometimes makes a conscious decision to ignore it. But not all the time.
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He told the On a Mission podcast (you can watch the full episode at the bottom of this page) Twitter is so bad. It is still, 95 percent of the comments that I’ll get are negative, the world. But you want nice comments. I like to say I’m not bothered, got a skin like a rhinoceros. And to be fair, I can really take stick. But there’s nothing like positive comments.
“When someone messages me and says ‘I love what you’re doing for boxing, that was a great show, I had a great night tonight, thank you’, that’s a great feeling
“It’s the crazy world you live in, that someone who you don’t know, who could never achieve or operate at the level of or have the workload that you do, are able to say something to you that could actually influence your mood or your day or your decisions.”
Comments off, sometimes
Hearn says he will often turn comments off so the constant bombardment does not get to him, but he also stresses that he cannot do that all the time. His job after all depends partly on what fans think.
“So when you break it down like that, you can’t let this infiltrate you. But when you’re passionate about something, and when you care what the fans think, you do. I’m guilty of that a lot, sometimes, I won’t take a break from social media but I’ll turn my comments off now.
“But I’ll still look every now and then because I need that feedback. I need to know what the market and the fans are actually thinking.
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“But those same people that might say something online, when they see you at show ask for a photo, it’s a toxic world. I try and teach my kids as well that it’s not real.
“I think it would be a better life to just turn it off. Because actually, the only way those comments can infiltrate you, is if you see them, or if you read them. And if you don’t read social media, you don’t see them.”
