Eddie Hearn’s road to Froch v Groves II started with Audley Harrison

There was a moment in November 2010, shortly after David Haye had smashed up Audley Harrison’s non-aggression pact with a pair of sledgehammers, when Eddie Hearn feared the first fight he had helped promote might be the last. “As I was walking back to the changing rooms with Audley, some bloke shouted: ‘Oi Hearn – you’re a shit promoter,’ and I thought that might be my lot,” he says. “The backlash was pretty bad. But on the Monday morning my phone didn’t stop ringing with fighters saying: ‘I saw what you did for Audley’s career – I want you to do that for me.’”

The first boxer who phoned was Darren Barker, a world middleweight contender. A week later Hearn took a call from Kell Brook’s father. A fortnight after that, Carl Froch came on board. “That was the turning point,” Hearn says. “Barker and Brook were two quality young fighters but to sign a world champion was a huge statement. In one month I blew the market apart.”

Three and a half years later, Hearn is British boxing’s dominant promoter. He has an exclusive, 23-fights-a-year deal with Sky until the summer of 2016. Many of the country’s best talent have flocked to his Matchroom stable. And on Saturday night comes his crowning glory, Froch v George Groves II, in front of 80,000 people at Wembley. It has been some journey. And it all began with a chance meeting in Las Vegas.

“I was playing in the World Series of Poker and happened to be drawn on the same table as Audley, who asked if he could get on a Matchroom show,” Hearn says. “So I phoned up the old man [Eddie’s father, Barry] and told him: ‘I think we can do something with Audley.’ The phone went stone quiet. Then he said: ‘You’re on your own, I’m going nowhere near him.’”

At the time everyone thought Harrison was a busted flush. But Eddie mapped out a plan for Harrison – win Prizefighter, then the European title, then fight Haye for the WBA heavyweight crown – that he followed to the letter. “He thought I was mad,” Hearn admits. “But I knew I could carve out opportunities for him if he did something credible.”

Later on there was another moment of right place, right time fortune: by 2011, Sky’s head of sport, Barney Francis, was frustrated with the lack of competitive fights on his channel. Hearn scented an opportunity and grabbed it.

“The shows that all promoters were doing – Matchroom included – were absolute garbage,” Hearn says. “They were in half-empty leisure centres with probably one remotely competitive fight on the bill. We tried to change that. We took a chance. We booked big arenas and made big fights, and we saw those arenas fill up and Sky’s viewing figures double. We then pushed to be the exclusive provider of boxing content on Sky, something that had never been done before, and we got it.”

What you have to understand about Hearn is that he is always promoting, even when you think he isn’t. He regularly responds to questions from his 141,000 Twitter followers, poses for selfies with fans and appears in YouTube clips. And his suits, like his stubble, are designer: they project a Reservoir Dogs cool that plays well with the fighters he promotes.

As James DeGale, the super-middleweight contender who recently joined Hearn, puts it: “Because he’s a young promoter, he’s down with us. He knows the code. He’s good at his job. And with the backing of Sky, and his touch, you can’t go wrong.”

Hearn is frank about his strategy for Froch v Groves II. “We are constantly reminding people that it will go down in history,” he says. “That is how I have tried to position it. Because when you have got a stadium with an 80,000 capacity there is no way that is 80,000 boxing fans. There are just not that many who buy tickets. We do great shows but sometimes we struggle to sell 4,000 tickets. What we are doing here is reaching out to the masses and saying: ‘This is a moment of British boxing history and you need to be there.’”

Even Hearn’s critics concede that he is a master of marketing – one rival says that if you look up Hearn in the dictionary it should be next to hype – but the man himself sees nothing wrong with a dab of spin and polish. “Hype is a word that is so integral for any promoter in any sport,” he says. “Hype, rivalry, controversy and quality; that’s what Froch v Groves has.”

In boxing it is impossible to be universally popular. Critics suggest that Hearn would not be as successful without his father’s influence, and cite others in the Matchroom stable, such as the matchmaker John Wischhusen, who deserve more credit.

But Sky’s head of boxing, Adam Smith, has no doubts that Hearn “has done a great job” in revitalising the sport. “Eddie is a good guy,” he says. “He knows we want as many 50-50 or 55-45 fights as possible and has largely delivered. He’s got that charm but he’s tough, too. Don’t you worry about that.”

Is he becoming too powerful, as some in the sport fear? In the early 1990s, close to Barry Hearn’s heyday, Hearn Sr told the Observer: “I want to monopolise, I want to dominate. It’s the way I am. It’s in my nature. They know if they come to me, they’ll get looked after. I pay the best money, so I get the best boxers.”

When I put that quote to Eddie he laughs and says: “I think he took the words out of my mouth.”

He continues: “It’s not a strategy to go out and monopolise and dominate. I don’t go out thinking: ‘I want to ruin everyone, I want to put everyone out of business, I want to be No1.’ It’s just something that I expect because our quality is far superior than anyone else. We have the biggest platform and we are making the biggest noise.”

And it is unlikely to get much louder than 80,000 people screaming amid the glitter and the gloaming at Wembley this Saturday night.