Frank Warren just picked a side in the most entertaining promoter fight of the year, and it isn’t Eddie Hearn’s. Warren told BoxingScene that Dana White had a “big involvement” in making Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua, the all-British heavyweight fight set for Dec. 11 at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales.
That matters because White and Hearn have spent weeks arguing about who actually built this thing. White has said repeatedly that he’s playing a major role in the promotion. Hearn, the Matchroom Boxing boss, has argued that White will mostly be on the sidelines come fight night. Warren’s comment lands squarely in White’s column.
White has been loud about it. Speaking with Pat McAfee on Tuesday, he said, “We’re promoting and producing the fight.” He also said that when tickets went on sale there were “less than 700 left,” which he called basically a sellout for an 80,000-seat stadium. He even name-checked Warren while discussing the Hearn drama: “Frank Warren is also involved in this fight.” So the two of them are telling the same story, and Hearn is the odd man out.
How We Got Here
The road to Cardiff got messy. According to MMA Fighting, White wanted to announce the fight at UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn of the White House this summer. Fury was there and had a segment on camera, but the announcement never happened. White’s explanation to McAfee was blunt: “Fckery [happened]. A lot of fckery has gone on since then.”
The biggest fight over the fight was location. Joshua and Hearn insisted on the United Kingdom, while White, who represents neither fighter, pushed for Madison Square Garden. Hearn and Joshua won that one, and White has since admitted the U.K. move worked.
The UFC also listed an event at the Principality Stadium on Dec. 11, the same date as the Netflix broadcast, which set off speculation about MMA bouts landing on the card. Bloody Elbow noted there’s been no official confirmation of that. Alistair Overeem isn’t waiting around, though. He called out Rico Verhoeven on Instagram to box on the card, writing, “Stop hiding.”
As for the actual fight, Paddy Pimblett told All Out Fighting he’s picking Joshua, pointing to Fury’s layoffs. Fury has retired twice in the past five years and looked uneven in recent wins over Mariusz Wach and Arslanbek Makhmudov. Pimblett also called the floated White vs. Hearn fight “the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
My Take
I love this. Two grown men arguing over credit for a fight that took about 10 years of talks to make is peak press-conference chaos, and Warren just tossed a lit match into it. Hearn can keep saying White is a spectator, but when the other British promoter in the building says Dana had a big hand in it, that argument gets real thin real fast. The scoreboard reads White and Warren two, Hearn zero, and the only fight that settles anything happens in Cardiff on Dec. 11.
