IT IS easy to forget that until November 15, 2023, Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren, British boxing’s two biggest rivals, had never even met, much less worked together.

But now, 16 months on, the pair will fully operate on the same platform for the first time ever in what should be seen as a watershed moment for the sport on these shores.

On April 1, Warren’s new multi million pound, multi-year deal with streaming platform DAZN kicks off, officially ending his and Queensberry’s long and successful alliance with TNT Sports. Hearn and Matchroom, of course, have had boxing on the platform in some form since back in 2018.

By way of promoting the new situation, The Ring is invited to DAZN’s London office to speak to Warren and Hearn, who these days look more like a father-son duo than bitter, feuding rivals who spent most weeks having virtual back-and-forths via Youtube interviews.

It seemed at one point it was precisely that rivalry which drove British boxing; both men simply had to outdo the other. It was Matchroom vs Queensberry and the fans were the winners. So now that they are all in the same boat, what is the goal?

“The competition is still there... What do you think we're going to do?” he says before pointing towards Hearn sitting beside him. “He wants to be the best, Oscar De La Hoya wants to be the best, I want to be the best.

“Of course they do, we're winners. That's what we do, that's what our passion is, that's what we get up in the morning for. We strive, we're like the fighters, we want to be the best at what we do.

“Sometimes we're the best, sometimes we fall behind because boxing goes in cycles, and at the moment I think we're flying. But the good thing about all this competition is now we're competitive in a good way; we want to keep doing what we're doing but we're talking, we're speaking, we're working out what is the best for the channel and what's the best for our respective companies.

“That's going to drive subscribers, because if we don't drive subscribers then we've failed.

“Selfishly for Queensberry, it's about the fact that we've got so many fighters now on our roster who've been quite successful that we felt that we'd gone as far as we could go with TNT. We didn't leave on bad terms but this is a no-brainer. It's a total no-brainer. The world's changed, it's shrinking, it's a global audience.”

Hearn is next. “There wasn’t a time when it was like ‘I’ve got to beat Frank Warren’,” he says, fooling nobody.

“It was still the love for what I do. I wasn't hating the business and the sport of boxing but thinking ‘I hate this but I've got to beat Frank’. It’s just that whatever I do, it doesn't matter if it's having a game of darts or a game of table tennis with my old man, I have to try and win, and that's the same in business.

“Don’t forget Frank created Queensberry so it’s very personal to him and that transcends through the family. His son George knows that and it’s the same way I feel about Matchroom. We have seen our fathers up, down, round, building this life for us and fighting for this business that is inbred in us.”

Since the emergence of Riyadh Season in boxing, Warren and Hearn, Queensberry and Matchroom, have been working regularly together but did either imagine they would ever end up on the same platform entirely?

“No,” Hearn answers. “Because generally a broadcaster would choose one of the two but now DAZN have got it right and the business model works. They're able to bring all these promoters to the platform, which is so unique.

“It's the product that's so good. You're not talking about one show every two or three weeks, you're talking about multiple shows per week.”

And the good news for boxing fans, they say, is that Queensberry and Matchroom will now never fall foul of schedule clashes.

“That won’t happen again,” says Warren in reference to the many times they have both staged shows on the same night. “That’s got to be gone for obvious reasons.”

Hearn adds: “That is so important. It wouldn’t be the case that Queensberry would announce a date and we’d say ‘quick, let’s go on the same night!’ It was normally the broadcaster telling us that’s the night it had to be. We’d say ‘oh for f**k’s sake’.

“When the shows clash you’re halving your audience at home and taking away potential ticket sales and everything. So now it’s good that you will have a schedule mapped out and no clashes.”

On Saturday night in Manchester, Joe Joyce and Filip Hrgovic will meet in the main event of Queensberry's first DAZN show. And, as he prepares to embark on the most lucrative broadcast deal of his Hall of Fame career in promotion, 73-year-old Warren is asked what continues to drive him.

“We all love it,” he says. “Once you touch it, you can't get rid of it. It's a bug. We all share a love and commitment to the sport, we've grown up on it, my cousins boxed, I used to go and watch them fight when I was 15 and younger than that when he boxed as an amateur.

"That's where we're from, that's our passion, and it doesn't matter whether you like Eddie or you like me, one thing you can't take away from us is our commitment and our passion because we give our lives to it.

"My missus said to me 'come on, let's do this holiday' but I'm looking at the list of fights and trying to find a way out of it. I'll say 'I can't do it because I've got the doctors that day', but actually I've got a fight on the Saturday.

“Even though it can be the most frustrating sport, I still invest in it and go with it, because you love the fighters, you love what they do, you watch them in the ring, and it's a unique sport. We are boxing junkies, that's what we are, that's our fix, it's those fighters."