Eddie Hearn reveals heartwarming gesture he'll never forget after fighter faced £95k fine

Eddie Hearn revealed that Andre Ward's generosity over nine years ago continues to stick with him after sitting down to speak to the boxing legend this week.

In 2015, Paul Smith was given the biggest fight of his career with him set to fight for the super middleweight world title against the undefeated Ward, who had been out of action for almost two years with the Englishman hoping to shock the boxing world.

Hearn and Smith traveled to the West Coast a week before proceedings with media duties throughout the week and getting to know Ward, before he was rocked by news that Smith would be missing weight... and by a considerable amount.

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This had been at an important time in Hearn's career as well as Smith's, with the promoter looking to branch out in the United States while taking his Matchroom boxers across the Atlantic.

But just hours before the fight had been due to take place, it was almost scrapped when Smith weighed in almost five pounds overweight and had to forfeit half of his purse to Ward while the belts had not been on the line.

Ward went on to win the fight in what was an impressive performance on his comeback, winning every round before continuous shots in the ninth forced Smith's corner to throw in the towel. After celebrating his win, Hearn had spoken to Ward and was blown away by his words.

Speaking on the All the Smoke Boxing podcast, Hearn said: "I will never forget one moment because it was one of my best educations... When you fought Paul Smith, he missed up the weight. They came to me an hour before and told me he wasn't going to make weight and he was over by four pounds. We've got you, we've got Jay (Jay-Z), we've got Roc Nation... I asked how much weight he could get off and they said he's f-----.

"After that fight, you came up to me in the ring and the deal that I did with Jay was that he had to pay you $125,000 extra for missing weight. You came up to me and asked if he's a good guy and has a family, and you said tell him to keep the $125,000... I will never forget that about you. That was a very nice touch."

Ward went on to fight four more times, winning in all of his bouts including moving up a weight divisions to win the light heavyweight belt against Sergey Kovalev before successfully defended it - retiring at the age of just 32.

Hearn has since gone on to promote multiple fights in the United States, including working with Canelo Alvarez, Gennady Golovkin and Vasyl Lomachenko.