Matchroom “Fight Camp” fighters arrive for week two

In a matter of days, Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing is set to stage its second “Fight Camp” card on the grounds of their headquarters in Essex, England.

And, on Tuesday the fighters for the Friday night show began to arrive for their participation, including quarantine in advance of their bouts.

Sky Sports Boxing was outside of the Matchroom HQ, as the fighters made their way in on Tuesday morning:

? The boxer's and trainers are ready for #FightCamp week 2!

? Watch the fights live on Sky Sports Action this Friday from 7pm! pic.twitter.com/YF1LNQovvR

— Sky Sports Boxing (@SkySportsBoxing) August 4, 2020

The headlining fight on the card is Britain’s Terri Harper defending her WBC women’s Junior Lightweight championship against Natasha Jones in a schedule 10 rounder. The co-feature will have Chris Billam-Smith in defense of his Commonwealth men’s Junior Middleweight belt against Nathan Thorley in a 12 rounder battle.

These fights come on the heels of the first installment of “Fight Camp: last week, which was Matchroom’s first produced show in over four months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The main event saw an upset, when Ted Cheeseman captured the IBF 154 lb. “International Championship” with a 12-round unanimous decision win over champ Sam Eggington in a hotly-contested battle.

Strict guidelines remain in place for British health officials and the British Boxing Board of Control, including testing everyone involved for multiple days leading up to Friday night.

Hearn reported on Monday night that everyone involved with this Friday’s second show is negative for Covid-19, for now:

All Co-vid tests conducted today for this weeks #FightCamp are negative ?

— Eddie Hearn (@EddieHearn) August 3, 2020

This was the case for last week’s show as well.

However, these situations can change suddenly, as it did for Premier Boxing Champions and Showtime last Wednesday. That’s when WBO Junior Featherweight number one ranked contender, Stephen Fulton of Philadelphia, who had tested negative two previous times for Covid-19 suddenly tested positive on Wednesday. That was just days before his scheduled showdown with fellow unbeaten and second ranked contender, Angelo Leo.

Fulton was pulled from the championship fight and Leo went on to fight his replacement unbeaten, Tramaine Williams. He beat him easily on a 12-round decision for the WBO 122 lb. belt.

Hearn and Matchroom hope to build on what was only a tepid audience showing for fight card number one, which averaged less 100,000 people watching with only around 200,000  actually watching the main event. For example, those numbers are more than three times less the audience that Bob Arum and Top Rank Boxing in the U.S. averaged for their June-July fight cards in their Las Vegas “bubble” at the MGM Grand Hotel.

The four card “Fight Camp” series will build towards the Saturday night August 22nd, and that’s when Hearn very much needs the heavyweight contender rescheduled battle between England’s, Dillian Whyte and former IBF champ, Russian Alexander Povetkin, to put on an exciting show with a much bigger audience.