LONDON – It’s fair to say boxing has been mauled by the constant discussions over Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury this week, so I’d be lying to say I travelled to the Copper Box to expect a story in the ring to dwarf the one outside it.
And while Lee Cutler overcame a cut and a few scrappy early moments to beat Louis Greene, Craig Richards was dropped and outpointed by the oft-underrated Radivoje Kalajdzic, and Johnny Fisher saw off the gutsy challenge of Michael Pirotton over 10 fairly evenly-matched rounds, it was left to Zuffa Boxing promoter Dana White to take centre stage at the post-show press conference at the Copper Box.
Fisher was so fatigued by the end of the fight that he required oxygen and did not attend the presser.
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For around 17 minutes after the fights, White fielded questions and several of his responses have subsequently gone viral.
Declan Taylor, from The Ring, asked whether White felt that AJ-Fury fight would happen. “That I don’t know,” White replied.
Then, White was asked in a follow up what the percentage likelihood of it was taking place was.
“Percentage? Well, the guy who’s supposed to be helping the fight has been hurting the fight [Eddie Hearn] the entire time. He hasn’t done the fight any favours. Let’s put it that way. We’ll see.
Then Jack Figg from The Sun was up, and Dana didn’t enjoy the exchange.
Figg flagged up that, on the Paramount broadcast, Max Kellerman had said that White was not working AJ-Fury as a promoter, but that he was helping Alalshikh on a personal level – in some kind of advisory capacity.
“I don’t know where that came from,” said White. “That was weird.”
Figg then started to mention Eddie Hearn and White instantly bristled… “Eddie Hearn says lots of things” and Figg asked White whether he was aware of the stipulation in Joshua’s contract that apparently states neither White nor Zuffa Boxing can be involved in the promotion of the show. White said he’d never tried to sign Joshua – I don’t think he heard the question properly – and then added, “I said 150,000 times I don’t know anyone who’s more full of fucking shit than Eddie Hearn. I’m done. If. When. Who. Whatever. This guy if full of fucking shit. I’ve been saying the same thing since way back when, and here we are.”
Figg asked another key question when he asked White whether he’d step away from the promotion if that meant the fight going ahead.
“That’s not up to me. I’m involved in the fucking fight.”
“Who’s it up to?” said Figg.
“I don’t know.
“Turki Alalshikh?”
“I don’t know. I know what you’re doing. Your leading questions, you fucking know.”
“No, I don’t think any of us know.”
Oh, really? You just get here, ‘Hi, welcome to boxing. Where you just fucking walk in from across the street with your cell phone, and you don’t know anything about this sport or what’s going on, and who the fuck are you, and how’d you end up in this?’”
Figg: “No one in this room seems to know what’s going on with the fight and who’s involved.”
White: “Oh, you have any other questions that are relevant to this evening or anything else?”
Figg followed up about Conor Benn, but it was brief reprieve for White who was then asked by John Nagioff of ProBoxing Fans for a message to fans who might have booked extortionately-priced hotel rooms for December 11 and now the fight is in apparent jeopardy.
“I don’t know, we’ll see how this thing plays out. Listen, Eddie Hearn will probably do 652,000 interviews in the next three hours, so I’m sure he’ll answer a lot of those questions for you.”
“You said there was more money if this fight went to New York, so why did it end up in Cardiff?” Nagioff added.
