Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua is officially the hottest ticket in Britain. Seats for the Dec. 11 heavyweight fight at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, sold out within an hour of going on sale Friday, LEADERSHIP Newspapers reported. UFC CEO Dana White followed that by predicting the event will produce the most lucrative live gate in the history of British boxing, according to Sky Sports.
The sale opened at 12 p.m. UK time (8 a.m. ET) on Oct. 9. Turki Alalshikh had been counting down to it on X earlier in the week, billing the matchup as one of the sport’s most anticipated fights and confirming it will stream live only on Netflix, with The Ring Magazine attached to the promotion. Two days of hype, one hour of inventory. That’s the whole story of the demand side.
The business side is messier. White and Matchroom boss Eddie Hearn have spent much of 2026 sniping at each other, and the latest round centers on what White’s role in this fight actually is. White keeps saying he’s promoting it. Hearn keeps saying he isn’t. On Tuesday, Hearn claimed White skipped the opening press conference because he was contractually barred from attending, and that White’s involvement would amount to a breach of contract, though he said he’d be fine with White producing the Netflix broadcast if the two sat down first.
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White wasn’t interested in sitting down. Speaking to reporters after Contender Series that night, he said he missed the presser because he never skips a Tuesday Contender Series and because the date was set around Alalshikh’s availability. Then he got loud.
“I am producing the fight. I am promoting the fight. I will be there at the fight,” White said, adding that he’d fly straight back to Las Vegas afterward for a UFC event with his production crew in tow. On Hearn’s breach-of-contract talk, he offered a dry “Sounds like he’s got an incredible lawsuit,” before landing on the line that probably matters most to the two men actually fighting: “Those two are gonna make a f*ck-ton of money.”
Hearn, for his part, has admitted the feud has turned “childish,” and an MMA Fighting headline this week had him saying he doesn’t care whether TKO produces the fight at all.
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For Fury, this is another return for a fighter who has never been great at staying retired. MMA Fighting grouped him with Chuck Liddell, B.J. Penn and Conor McGregor in a piece on stars who struggle to walk away. Joshua, meanwhile, has apparently been taking notes from a legend. Gaston Reyno posted video on X of Roberto Durán showing Joshua body shots, which is about as good a teacher as a man can find for that particular lesson.
My take: White’s gate prediction is the easiest call he’s made all year, because the market already answered it in under 60 minutes. A Welsh stadium full of British fans waiting years for this fight was always going to spend whatever it took. What I’d rather watch between now and Dec. 11 is whether Joshua actually goes to the body in Cardiff, because the image of Durán’s old hands guiding his young ones is the most interesting thing anyone has posted about this fight, and it had nothing to do with who gets to call himself the promoter.
