Dana White has been bragging about his unauthorized involvement in the Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua boxing superfight for months. Now he’s starting to sound pretty sick of the whole thing as contractual restrictions may push him out of the fight or result in the bout being cancelled.
Much ink has been spilled regarding the current mess that is Fury vs. AJ. The crux of it is this: Anthony Joshua has a signed contract with the Saudis that states his fight with Tyson Fury must take place in the U.K., and it must not involve TKO and/or Dana White. Joshua’s manager Eddie Hearn is enforcing both those provisions, and while the bout has now been announced for Principality Stadium in Cardiff, White’s involvement is still a potential fight-cancelling sticking point.
White was in the U.K. for Zuffa Boxing’s latest boxing card and faced off with Britain’s boxing press row, who didn’t just tuck tail and stop asking questions at the first hint of Dana’s displeasure. Things got pretty contentious as reporter after reporter ignored the event that just happened and grilled the UFC CEO on Fury vs. Joshua instead.
“Have I not answered this question 257,000 times?” White said about his involvement in the fight. “Same as it was yesterday and the day before that and the day before that … We’re promoting the fight right now. And what I’ve said 150,000 times, I don’t know if I’ve ever known anybody who’s more full of f–ing s–t than Eddie Hearn. I’m done. This guy is full of f–king s–t, I’ve been saying the same thing since way back when, and here we are.”
Asked by Jack Figg of The Sun if he’d step away from the fight to ensure it would still happen, White said, “That’s not up to me. I’m involved in the f–king fight.”
Asked if it was Saudi boxing power broker Turki Alalshikh’s call, White got even more annoyed.
“I know what you’re doing, you’re leading questions and you f–king know,” he said. Figg denied the charge, and White replied, “Oh, really, you just get here? Welcome to boxing, what did you just f–king walk in from across the street with your cellphone and you don’t know anything about the sport or what’s going on and who the f–k are you and how did you end up in this?”
“Have you got any questions that are relevant to this evening or anything else?”
White refused to elaborate on an Instagram Story image showing him talking to Turki Alalshikh on a video call, saying any questions about ‘Sheikh Turki’ would have to be directed to Alalshikh himself. Then he turned his ire back to Anthony Joshua’s manager Eddie Hearn.
“Eddie Hearn will probably do 652,000 interviews in the next 3 hours,” he said. “So, I’m sure he’ll answer a lot of those questions for you.”
“If Eddie Hearn really cared about this f–king fight, first of all, the fight would have happened a long time ago, number one. Number two, he can finance the thing himself. I mean, I said this a million times. Finance the fight yourself. F–king sell tickets, cut a TV deal, and sell the fight.”
The press conference ended with little new information, but White suggested all would be clear soon.
“We’ll all know a lot more in the next three to four days,” he said.