By BoxingInsider Editorial
The compromise that saved Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua became visible on Wednesday, and by the end of the night Eddie Hearn had explained it himself.
Michael Buffer opened the launch press conference at the British Airways ARC in London by introducing the parties behind the event. Dana White was not among the names he read.
Turki Alalshikh raised him anyway. The crowd booed. Alalshikh kept going.
“Big thanks to my brother Dana White who is not here today,” Alalshikh said. “This is between you and them, not me. I want to offer some advice to Eddie, don’t watch Braveheart a lot. You’re all making history here.”
Hearn, seated a few feet away, was caught on camera smiling broadly as the boos came.
It was not the only moment aimed at Joshua’s promoter. Asked by Max Kellerman, “Who came into boxing a couple years ago, and all of a sudden all the fights you want to see are happening?”, Alalshikh answered with a question of his own: “One question, is it me or Eddie Hearn?”
White was not there. He hosted Contender Series in Las Vegas on Tuesday night and said his absence was a scheduling matter.
“No, because I was here,” White said when asked whether he would attend. “I would have been there if I didn’t have the Contender.” He added: “There’s no confusion whatsoever. It’s happening.” On the week’s delays: “This isn’t a hesitation, this is an ego thing. Total ego thing. It has nothing to do with any of this s***.”
Hearn’s version is different, and he gave it at length after the press conference.
“So the reason Dana didn’t come today is because he was not permitted today,” Hearn told The Stomping Ground. “It’s embarrassing. The reality is his event last night, he could have got on his jet and come here. The press conference started at 7 p.m., he would have made it easy. What I’m getting at, that battle was won by us. No problem, we move on.”
He also explained the mechanism, which is the clearest account anyone has given of what the clause actually does.
“It’s a load of bollocks,” Hearn said. “The thing is this Turki is partners with Dana and Nick Khan. He wants them involved in the event, contractually they can’t be unless I allow them to be. Now these guys, Dana, etc just played it all wrong. I’m not even going to sit here and slag it off because what’s happened to them over the last seven days has been one of the greatest PR disasters in boxing. I don’t even have to go in on them.”
By that description, the bar is not a line between TKO and everyone else. It is a permission Hearn grants or withholds, person by person.
Which explains what the cameras showed. Ring Magazine’s own footage has Alalshikh, Hearn, Frank Warren and Nick Khan greeting each other and shaking hands before the event. Khan, a TKO Group Holdings board member and the president of WWE, was then seated beside Alalshikh for the duration of it. He is also one of the four executives named in Zuffa Boxing’s leadership alongside White, Alalshikh and Sela chief executive Dr. Rakan Alharthy.
Hearn said what the alternative would have looked like. “All you had to do was say, we understand there is a contract in place that prevents us from being involved, we’re going to get together with Eddie Hearn and Turki Alalshikh and we’re going to discuss it. If you can tell me a reason that I should allow these people into the fight and it benefits Anthony Joshua and Matchroom, let’s chat.”
He went further on White’s public claims through the summer.
“What you can’t do is sit up there and tell the world you’re promoting the event, you know where the fight’s taking place and the fight’s happening in America,” Hearn said. “You thought you had the fight in America. You told the world you knew where it was. You told the world you signed the venue contract. None of that materialized. You were wrong.”
And on why he held the line: “But you made it a fight and I have to stand up for what he wants but I also have to stand up for myself, the company, these people are coming to end everyone in boxing. So I had to let them know that we don’t play around. The fact is we won. We won but that’s over now.”
Frank Warren has said the same about his own fighter’s paperwork. Speaking to Fight Hub TV in May, Warren said: “In the contract with Tyson, it says that Zuffa will not be able to promote that fight.” Fury has since said he removed that clause himself.
What none of it settles is the difference between the two accounts of Wednesday. White says he had a show in Las Vegas. Hearn says he was not permitted. Both men have said their version more than once, and nobody from Sela, The Ring or Netflix has offered a third.
Alalshikh, for his part, declined to adjudicate it from the stage. He explained the venue instead, saying he wanted Wembley and that “London would not let me have the stadium until 2am. In the end Wales delivered and the fight is still in the UK.”
Hearn then made peace with him. “Turki, I know we might have fallen out, I promise you on December 11 this will be the greatest night you’ve ever had,” he said, before promising “f***ing war” in Cardiff.
So the fight is saved, the stage was British, White’s name went unread by the ring announcer, and the man who says he decides who gets into the room says the battle is over and he won it.
White has not responded to Hearn’s remarks. The fight takes place Friday, December 11 at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, live on Netflix.
