Eddie Hearn: If you don’t do something about your fitness in your 40s, life can get worse very quickly

It was my daughter’s birthday last weekend, so I took her to the fight between KSI and Tommy Fury. She said it was one of the best nights she ever had. In my opinion it was a great event that had fantastic numbers, but the product is very poor when it comes to live sport.

Saying that, there were 20 thousand people in the arena, and at 7pm, when it started, there was no empty seat in the house and no one left their seat for four hours.

I met Sir Mo Farah at the show. He came to me and said: I’ve been following all your stuff, I’ve seen all your races and it’s great, you look brilliant. That means a lot coming from an Olympic champion.

Mo Farah isn’t the only person who wants to talk to me about my new lifestyle. I get half a dozen direct messages a day from people saying they’re following my fitness journey. Every time I post about running a 5k, I’ll have people messaging me saying: My time is up now. I will join you to win 5k at one of the shows. It’s good to listen to people because any time you can change someone’s path or help them, it’s a really cool thing to do.

I also think it’s really important for guys my age to do something for their health and fitness. Your 40s, to me, are the fundamental part of your life that determines what your back end will look like. If you get it wrong in your 40s, life can get worse quickly. I like to think of my journey as a wake-up call to everyone who is at that stage in their life where they had their youth and left, and now they’re at the bottom of their careers, with kids and responsibilities, and they’re looking at themselves and saying, I better Do something.

This is your time to change direction, and I think it’s crucial because if you don’t get it right at 40 and then you get to 50, you’ll get old very quickly.

I have a group of friends, we’re all the same age and we’re all working really hard at the gym right now. Someone will post a photo in the WhatsApp group, and it may look a little strange, but it could be him in just his swimming trunks, Great session. I’m flying here. We were all like, ‘Go ahead, guys. Go ahead, son.

We laughed at us in our 20s, in Faliraki in our sleeveless tops and at us in the gym training when neither of us were in good shape. Now we’re all 44 or 45 and we’ve finally made it. In some ways it came 20 years too late, but we felt great.

That doesn’t mean I’m perfect. I ate a lot this weekend. I had a roast dinner, I ate some toasted bagels with ham, I ate some cake, but as I’m in shape now it’s not the end of the world.

I think one of the reasons this column is working is that, aside from my workload and travel, I’m pretty average. I’m a 44-year-old man, who’s not very strong, not in unbelievable shape, and I’ve always struggled with my fitness and diet. I don’t really have any free time and, to be honest, I’m tired. You can’t get more normal than that.

I understand that you’re not going to hit your diet plan numbers every day, and I’m not yet at a point where I can prioritize my training over my work. I’m doing my best, but I feel almost guilty doing this because it can’t really affect the business.

But somehow I’m still working. For example, I woke up the other morning, ran a 5K, and then headed to the airport to catch a flight to San Francisco for Devin Haney’s press conference. Really, I would have liked to have done a strength session, but it wasn’t possible, so I’ll wake up in the morning around 5 or 6 am and then I’ll do my strength session.

I will do this because I never want to look or feel like I did two years ago. There is also so much more I want to achieve. I want to do an Ironman 70.3 and see how much I can actually lift in the gym. I want to be able to do a dozen push-ups. I also want to see how much better my life will be when I reach my 50s and 60s.

Doing this now could save my life or it could give me another 10 or 20 years. Who knows, this could give me another 40 years. With the history of heart problems in my family, I could have had a heart attack and died, who knows?

What motivates me now is the fear of feeling like I used to. When I think about it, it was horrible. And I don’t think it would have lasted that long.