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➤message from Eddie. ‘You are definitely going to
learn how to drive?’ ‘Of course I’ll learn to drive!
Of course I will!’ Well, I still can’t drive. I had
lessons, but I was terrible at driving.”
Hearn would later admit that he had been
terribly hungover on the day he interviewed
Leaver and couldn’t really recall any of the
other candidates. So, without a driving licence
but with the good fortune to be last in the
interview chair on that particular day, Leaver
was granted a three-month trial. It seemed to go
okay; he has been working for Hearn ever since.
“Eddie hasn’t changed,” Leaver insists. “You can’t
say the success has gone to his head because he grew
up surrounded by success. He’s still the same, still the
same Jack the Lad sense of humour,
still very much the same character I
met all those years ago. He’s always
been driven, perhaps from the
pressure of his dad’s reputation, but
he works frighteningly hard to deliver
that success.
“Lots of journalists get in touch
with me and complain that they can’t
get hold of him. Well I can’t get hold
of him either. It’s not like I’m sitting
there next to him and can just give
him a nudge and tell him to answer
his phone. He doesn’t even answer the phone to me anymore
but I understand the bigger picture and we’ve all got our roles
to ensure we don’t have to speak to him every five minutes –
that’s what he pays us for.”
For the first two years of his career, Leaver, alongside Hearn,
focused purely on golf and poker as per the job description.
And then faltering British heavyweight Audley Harrison walked
up to a gambling table and changed everything.
The story of Harrison, part of the celebrity poker circuit, and
Eddie Hearn coming together in a Las Vegas casino is often
told. It effectively reignited Hearn’s relationship with boxing
after being an avid follower as a child when his dad, Barry, was
among the UK’s leading promoters. Harrison tempted Eddie –
then focusing on Matchroom’s involvement in online gaming- to take a chance on him. He was also the catalyst for Leaver
to find his way into the sport.
Leaver would write press releases for early Prizefighter
events before taking over as Matchroom’s chief boxing press
officer ahead of Harrison’s doomed shot at WBA heavyweight
champion, David Haye, in 2010.
“I didn’t have a f**king clue what I was doing,” Leaver chuckles
today. “Not a clue. That was where people like [photographer]
Lawrence Lustig and Johnny Wish [Matchroom’s former Head
of Boxing, John Wischhusen] were amazing to me, they helped
me out so much.
“I didn’t even go to the Haye-Harrison post-fight press
conference because I didn’t know that was a thing. I didn’t go
to the Amir Khan-Paul McCloskey post-fight press conference
either. I just left. I just assumed that they wouldn’t be doing a
press conference. They’d just boxed hadn’t they? They must be
completely knackered! I had no idea.
“It was such an eye-opener to go from doing the odd
Prizefighter bit to then doing a world heavyweight title fight. I
remember Eddie telling me to go and have a chat with Audley.
So, in the Park Plaza hotel where an early press conference was,
I was in the lift with Audley, making small talk and trying to think
of what to say. Eddie was waiting for us at the bottom. I came
out alongside Audley, who is about two-feet taller than me.
Eddie just laughed. ‘You can’t do that again,’ he said, ‘because
that looks absolutely ridiculous’.”
Young Leaver would soon find fighters he was better suited
to than erratic 6ft 5ins heavyweights. Despite Harrison’s awful
showing against Haye, when he lost in three rounds, Hearn’s
obvious knack for promotion saw fighters like Carl Froch,
Darren Barker, Gavin Rees, Tony Bellew and James DeGale
work with Matchroom. Lever would build solid friendships
with them all. But the nature of boxing, the short-
lived careers, the highs and the lows and the
often-delicate egos involved, means that
such friendships can be difficult to sustain.
Inevitably, those relationships endured some
difficult moments.
“It’s awful when they lose,” Leaver reports.
“The worst one was of the lot was [Scott]
Quigg after he’d lost to Carl Frampton. Being
in that dressing room, he was devastated,
absolutely devastated. I felt like I had no
business being in there let alone telling him what
to do. It was a real grudge match and, after he’d lost,
he was inconsolable. There were tears, we left him
alone, but I was the one who had to go back and say,
‘You’ve got to do a press conference
now, mate.’ Full credit to him, he put
on a t-shirt and did the presser, with
I LOST ALL DECORUM. a broken jaw and with tears in hisI WAS IN PRESS
ROW ON MY FEET
SCREAMING FOR
DEGALE TO WIN”
WHAT A NIGHT:
Leaver will name the
night when Bellew
won the WBC title as
his most memorable
on the job
Photos: LAWRENCE LUSTIG/
MATCHROOM