Floyd Mayweather and Eddie Hearn Plan Money Team vs. Matchroom Tournament

Matchroom boss Eddie Hearn has revealed he is working with Floyd Mayweather Jr. to set up a six-man boxing tournament that would pit fighters from their respective promotions against one another.

As reported by Declan Taylor of the MailOnline, Hearn has been in talks with Mayweather Promotions “for the last few months” about the event.

Leonard Ellerbe, the chief executive of Mayweather Promotions, has also spoken to Hearn in the past week in Washington D.C. about how to structure the competition.

"I managed to speak to Floyd and [Ellerbe] and I'm excited. We discussed [James] DeGale and also how best to work together in matching our fighters," said Hearn, per Taylor. "We're going to do something in September where we're looking at doing a [Mayweather] team versus a Matchroom team in a five or six-man tournament in one night. They've got a whole list of guys in many different weights."

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Boxers like Rocky Fielding, Ricky Burns and Anthony Crolla could potentially get involved in the tournament, according to Hearn, and it could be staged in the United Kingdom. He also suggested J'Leon Love and Ashley Theophane could represent Mayweather’s promotion.

“We're looking at having a big cash bonus for the team winners—either the Matchroom or the Money Team—which would be split between the fighters,” he added. “It will be a nice team environment going into the fights and I think it will be fun.”

Ellerbe confirmed on his Twitter feed there have between discussions between him and Hearn recently:

Since retiring from the sport last year with a superb 49-0 record, Mayweather has been heavily involved in the promoting business. He was in Washington D.C. to watch Badou Jack retain his WBC super-middleweight title after a draw with Lucian Bute on Saturday night.

There has been some tentative talk about a return for the man known as Money, with the man himself saying “you just never know” when asked about a comeback, per Showtime (h/t the Guardian). However, this recent post on Instagram suggests he’s in little rush to get back in the ring:

Promoting is something Mayweather certainly seems to be enjoying, and to have his name on a tournament in the UK would spike interest. It’d be a fascinating and refreshing concept, too, with boxing usually all about the individual.

For Hearn, establishing links with names like Mayweather and Ellerbe is important. That’d potentially pave the way for not only tournaments like the one in the making, but lucrative bouts between big names from their respective groups further down the line.