Eddie Hearn has sided with the World Boxing Council (WBC) in its feud with Terence Crawford, who was stripped of his WBC title for refusing to pay sanctioning fees.

Crawford masterfully outpointed Canelo Alvarez in September, taking the undisputed super-middleweight belts from the Mexican in Las Vegas – and becoming the only three-division undisputed champion of the modern era.

However, the unbeaten Crawford was not undisputed at 168lb for long; this week, the 38-year-old was stripped of his WBC title after failing to pay the sanctioning body its fees for the Canelo fight, and for one previous bout.

WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman called the move a “slap in the face”, while the unbeaten boxer fired back in a swearing tirade on social media.

Now, Hearn has weighed in on the matter, siding against Crawford, against whom he has promoted boxers before.

“What he did is a little bit like going out to a restaurant, having all the best caviar and lobsters,and the bill comes and you go: ‘I ain’t paying that!’ And you just walk out,” Hearn told iFL TV

“You sat down at the table, you wanted to eat all the good stuff; you’ve got to pay your dues and you’ve got to pay your bill.

“Now, what he will say in answer to that is: ‘The bill was too much.’ No, the rules are the rules. But Terence is looking at it, going: ‘Well, it’s $ 300,000.’”

Indeed, Crawford was expected to pay $ 300,000 for his fight with Canelo, with the WBC saying that figure was based on his $ 50m purse – but that the sum was a reduction from the usual 3 per cent of a purse, down to just 0.6 per cent. Sulaiman also said $ 225,000 would have gone to a boxing charity.

“You wanted the opportunity to call yourself an undisputed champion, right?” Hearn continued. “And the only way you can do that is to fight for the WBC world title. So, if belts don’t matter, then surely undisputed doesn’t matter to you.

“For me, if you want to fight for the undisputed championship, you have to abide by the rules of that belt.

“But also, this is the era of… The new wave of boxing, coming in, is going to try to f*** all the belts.”

Hearn was referencing the recent entry of TKO into boxing; the parent company of WWE and UFC has begun working with Saudi boxing matchmaker Turki Alalshikh, with intentions of disrupting boxing’s existing belt system.