Hearn wants Tevin Farmer-Gervonta Davis, but has offers declined by Mayweather Promotions

Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn is keen on staging a junior lightweight title unification between Tevin Farmer and Gervonta Davis, two fighters who have had a personal beef for well over a year now.

With both fighters having mentioned time and again that they’d like to have that fight, the only thing that seems to be standing in the way is Mayweather Promotions, whom Gervonta Davis is currently signed to. Davis, 23, has fought only once in 2018, isn’t expected to return this year, and has been extremely vocal on social media about being displeased with his promotional situation.

Hearn tells ESPN that he extended an offer to co-promote Davis on DAZN for three fights, which would earn Davis the biggest purses of his career by far. That offer was declined by Mayweather Promotions. Hearn then went back and offered a one-fight co-promotional deal just to stage the Farmer fight, or any other fight they could agree on. That offer was also declined.

“I went back [to Mayweather Promotions] and said, ‘Look, if you don’t want to do a three-fight deal with me, do a one-fight deal.’ The money is three times more than he’s making at the moment,” said Hearn, the No. 1 promoter in the United Kingdom. “America is a strange market. If that happened in the U.K. and the kid turned around and went, ‘I want to take it,’ you have no choice. In the U.S., the promoters seem to have much more power to be able to say, ‘No, I’m not letting you’ or ‘You’re not allowed to.’ That’s crazy. It might not suit Mayweather Promotions to upset their [broadcast] partner that will affect their other business by taking this deal. But how is that acting in the best interest of the fighter?”

Hearn mentions that he’ll go back to Mayweather Promotions with yet another offer, but if he can’t get any traction he could instead try to make a fight between Farmer and Scott Quigg, who just stopped Mario Briones this past weekend on the Andrade-Kautondokwa undercard.