Barry Hearn attempted to dissuade his son Eddie from making the rematch between Carl Froch and George Groves at Wembley Stadium.

Interest in a second fight between the rival super middleweights, following their thrilling first encounter at the Manchester Arena, was such that they attracted in the region of 80,000 to Wembley on May 31, 2014 - 10 years ago today - and therefore a post-war record crowd.

In the years before Eddie Hearn ran Matchroom his father Barry had also overseen one of British boxing's biggest fights — the rematch in 1993 between Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn, when for all of the interest in their rivalry after so entertaining a first fight between them, 55,000 watched them at Manchester United's Old Trafford for a second time.

Twenty-one years later, and in an era in which boxing was less regularly on terrestrial television, Barry Hearn feared that his son was overestimating interest in Froch-Groves II and that he would therefore lose money hiring a stadium that would have countless empty seats.

When he was ringside that night he then knew beyond doubt that he had been wrong, and to the extent he is reminded of it on further occasions when he and his son, whose profile has surpassed his, disagree.

"Carl Froch had achieved quite a lot in the ring but he’d never really become a public figure and never really earned any money," said the former chairman of Matchroom. "That was Eddie’s first big project – to make Carl Froch a national figure, and he did. 

"The first fight [in November 2013] was quite controversial, and the second one – he just phoned me up one day and said, ‘I’m at Wembley’. ‘What you doing there?’ ‘I’m checking it out for the Froch-Groves rematch.’ ‘Ed, Ed – come on now. It’s Wembley. It’s f****** massive. It’s not York Hall, Bethnal Green. It’s not even The O2. This is Wembley.’ 

"He said, ‘I think this is a massive fight’. I said, ‘I think it’s a great fight, but when you say massive, I did the biggest of all, which was [Chris] Eubank-[Nigel] Benn, 55,000 people at Old Trafford – the rematch — and I know what it does for you. These are very stressful, these big shows. You must be off your rocker’. He said, ‘You put me in charge, so if I’m in charge I make the call’. 

"That’s how it works – you never give someone a management position and then carry on managing yourself, ‘cause there’s no point in giving them a job. Reluctantly – and it was reluctantly – I said, ‘The worst you can do is it can lose a load of money; it’s not the end of my life’. 

"He felt so passionate about the fight, and the British public warming to it, it reminded me of [Joe] Bugner-[Frank] Bruno in ’87, when I did my first big show. But a big show that had 33,000, and suddenly you’re going to Wembley and it’s 80,000, as Carl Froch will tell you every day of the week. Despite my misgivings, it sold out pretty well straight away, and it made a lot of money for everybody, and from a Froch perspective it was the perfect result [he stopped Groves in the eighth] as well, so since that day I’ve kind of kept my mouth shut about his plans. 

"During Covid, when he said, ‘I think we’ll do boxing in the garden’. ‘F*** off – do you know what that’s gonna cost? That’s like £1.1m, £1.2m just to stage it in our garden, without a large crowd.’ He said, ‘Do you remember Froch-Groves?’ And I thought, ‘Here we go…’. He don’t stop reminding me of it. I got it completely wrong. It was a massive show – massive pay-per-view success, and I think, probably from Froch-Groves, though I’ve got an opinion on everything, I don’t push it. I think he’s probably a better operator than I was, to be honest.

"I was drawing on my own experience. There wasn’t a bigger fight than Benn-Eubank II. The first fight was a classic; 55,000 people; that didn’t fill up Manchester United, and it was a massive, massive thing. If you go to Wembley – it’s an iconic stadium. It has a lot of history. I just didn’t think it’d work, and of course, within two days of going on sale, I realised I’d got it completely wrong.

"Don’t worry – he hasn’t let me forget that for the last 10 years. I still live with it now. If I ever raise half a query over anything, like the Covid experiment in the garden, he says, ‘Do you remember Froch-Groves?’. In other words, ‘F*** off – you don’t know what you’re talking about; you’re a silly old man and I know what I’m doing’. Reluctantly, I had to put my hands up to say, ‘Fair enough’. But from that stage on, although he has weird and wonderful ideas, the vast majority of them actually work, and I’ve just learned to bite my tongue now and keep opinions to myself. I’m waiting for him to have his comeuppance, but I’ve been waiting for 10 years – there’s no sign of it now.

"[He reminds me] at least once a month. At least once a month. Anytime we have slight words – we’re very close as father and son; we’re more like mates – he does not lose one opportunity to take the p*** out of me.

"The greatest compliment he’s ever had is for me to hold my hands up and say, ‘Fair dos, mate – the king is dead. Long live the king’."

The success of the rematch between Froch and Groves contributed so much to Anthony Joshua's victories over Wladimir Klitschko and Alexander Povetkin being staged at Wembley, which was also the venue in 2022 when Tyson Fury stopped Dillian Whyte.

"It would be in the top four or five [of my most memorable nights in boxing]." Hearn continued. "The Benn-Eubank I fight in 1990 was a very interesting change – our business was really struggling in the late ‘80s with recession; we were losing millions of pounds. We stuck in there; borrowed; begged; stole money; whatever to keep going. 

"Froch-Groves, from Sky’s perspective as well, it was [just after] the return of pay-per-view; boxing was at quite a low ebb. Although you had Ricky Hatton and people like that bringing the occasional bit of drama, when you compare it to the type of fights now, you can understand how I and others all got it wrong.

"When he took over Froch he had an advantage – he knew that Froch was already a good fighter. But it was a success beyond my imagination, which shows you my limitations. 

"What happened there is a phrase he uses all the time. ‘Give me a chance to find a narrative.' 'A story. Something that people discuss at work. Something people have opinions on.’ [It’d been a long time since British boxing] had captured the imagination in the same way that Froch-Groves did. There was that feeling of Groves got a bit robbed in the first one, and it was touch and go. The biggest thing is the narratives – these stories evolve. It gives people a conversation point and a chance to express their own opinions, and the nation was expressing its opinion, and the first thing they wanted to do was make sure they were there. 

"It had that feeling of a new dawn of boxing. Pay-per-view was back, which generated crazy money. Fighters were earning millions instead of hundreds of thousands. You just have to put your hands up and say, ‘I got it absolutely, 100 per cent wrong – well done’. That was a pivotal moment in our relationship, because I realised the kid was good. It brought in the type of money from a domestic fight that we’d never seen before. There wasn’t anything as big, without a doubt.

"Froch, of all people, was of course the tightest b****** that ever walked on the earth," Hearn said, tongue-in-cheek. "He loves a pound note. I remember going through the financials – with fights like that we work on a percentage. The fighter actually owns the show. The file that went to their accountants was a foot deep with invoices – everything – because we didn’t want there to be any secrets. I remember sending off Froch’s. Groves got one. Froch got one. Groves sent his to his accountant, to check the figures – quite rightly. Froch wouldn’t employ an accountant, and then he phoned me up afterwards and said, ‘Who’s this?’. 'He was on the undercard.' He went, ‘£14.60 for laundry? On his hotel bill. That’s not on, is it?’ I said, ‘You just made £5m, £6m, £7m, and you’re querying… if it’s a problem to you, I’ll pay it’. ‘No, I don’t want the money off you, but it’s not right, is it? He should be told.' Feet on the ground. 

"I think he got his money about six weeks after Groves, simply because he hadn’t bothered to check the figures. He’s a one-off, and he’s done well in his life and his businesses because he’s got the same attitude.

"It was a pivotal moment in British boxing for a lot of reasons. That hadn't happened on that level before."