Barry Hearn
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Barry Hearn (born 1949, Dagenham, Essex, and educated at Buckhurst Hill County High School from 1959 to 1966) is an English sports entrepreneur, the founder and chairman of promotions company Matchroom Sport. A qualified accountant who made his first fortune by buying and selling a chain of snooker halls, he began his promotional career in 1974 working with little remembered players Geoff Foulds (Neal's father) and Vic Harris before becoming manager of six times world champion Steve Davis from 1976, and prospered from the snooker boom of the 1980s when he formed Matchroom with players Davis and Tony Meo. Later Matchroom snooker players include Terry Griffiths, Dennis Taylor, Willie Thorne, Neal Foulds, Jimmy White, Cliff Thorburn and Ronnie O'Sullivan.
Hearn moved into boxing in 1987, and has promoted leading British and Irish boxers such as Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn, Lennox Lewis, Naseem Hamed, Steve Collins and Herbie Hide.
Hearn withdrew his boxers Herbie Hide and Steve Collins from the High Noon in Hong Kong event at the last minute, scheduled on 22 October 1994, when promoter John Daly could not come up with the purses.[1]Hearn said, "But to be honest I was very pleased with myself in Hong Kong. I stood my ground. How many others would have?"[2]
In April 2008 he introduced the Prizefighter series, a knockout tournament featuring 8 different boxers in a sort of last man standing competition. Matchroom is also involved in pool, tenpin bowling, golf (see PGA EuroPro Tour), fishing, darts (Hearn chairs the Professional Darts Corporation) and poker. It specialises in creating good value for money programming to fill the hours of television sport air-time created by the boom in digital sport channels.
In a separate venture, Hearn has been chairman of the football league club Leyton Orient since 1995. Prior to Hearn's takeover the club was facing a financial disaster due to the collapse of the then chairman Tony Wood's coffee business in Rwanda at the time of the Rwandan Genocide. Hearn's intervention and financial input assured the club's future. Although Hearn has been successful in stabilising the club financially his tenure has overseen the club's longest run in the bottom division (known through the years as '4th Division', '3rd Division' and 'League 2') of the Football League since its creation (in 1958). However at the culmination of the 2005-06 season Leyton Orient earned promotion to the third tier of English league football (League One) this being their first automatic promotion since 1969-70.
Perhaps his finest moment came when he appeared in the video for "Snooker Loopy", a hit for rockney megastars Chas & Dave. Despite only appearing for mere seconds, Hearn has stated his desire to have the words "Pot the red then screw back" chiseled into his grave.
[edit] References
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This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (May 2009) |
- ^ Boxing: Everybody blames each other for fight fiasco: High Noon in Hong Kong promised much but delivered only grief, as Harry Mullan discovered
- ^ Boxing: Hearn rides the blows: As boxing fights to restore its credibility, a 46-year-old former champion steps back in the front line while the man at the centre of the fiasco in Hong Kong is determined to rise again after High Noon: Simon O'Hagan meets the promoter who refuses to be knocked out of his stride
