Dana White Rejects Eddie Hearn’s PR Disaster Claim Over Fury-Joshua
Dana White says missing the London launch for Tyson Fury versus Anthony Joshua was a scheduling problem, not the public-relations failure Eddie Hearn described. Asked about it during UFC 332 fight week in Salt Lake City, the UFC chief said he had not watched the press conference and did not see how his absence qualified as a disaster.
The question came a day after Fury and Joshua met the media on Sept. 30 at Olympia Exhibition Centre in London. That card is set for Dec. 11 at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, with Netflix carrying the show. White was not in the room. Hearn, whose Matchroom Boxing promotes Joshua, treated the empty seat as the point.
“It’s a load of bollocks,” Hearn told The Stomping Ground after the London event. “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 [involved]. 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.”
A reporter put that charge to White at the UFC 332 media availability, where Natalia Silva and Wang Cong are headlining a vacant women’s flyweight title fight Saturday at the Delta Center. The reporter noted it was the first time White had been seen since London and asked whether he had watched, and what he made of what happened. White stopped him before the criticism was fully on the table.
“I did not,” White said. “I haven’t seen it, no. What transpired? What are you asking me?” Told that Hearn had called it a PR disaster, and that fans had expected him in London, White went to the calendar. “Well, I had the contender series yesterday. I had to be here today. I fly a lot, but that’s, that’s a little, that’s a little bit of a rough trip.”
That answer matches the split he had already described. Dana White’s Contender Series ran the day of the London press conference, and UFC 332 fight week required him in Utah the next day. London to Salt Lake City is the trip he called rough. He did not argue the fans’ expectation. He argued that the expectation ignored the other show he was already producing.
White then widened the claim past attendance. “I don’t, not only am I promoting the fight, we’re producing the fight, too,” he said. “UFC’s gonna produce the, the show. I don’t know how that’s a PR disaster. I’m right.” The last line landed with a shrug. He did not address Hearn’s contract argument, and he did not say he had seen the comments he was answering.
Those are two different versions of the same fight. Hearn’s position is that Turki Alalshikh may want White and Khan involved, but a contract blocks that involvement unless Matchroom agrees.
He has also said White’s side should have asked for a meeting instead of appearing in the publicity. White’s position, restated in Utah, is that the UFC is both promoting and producing the Dec. 11 broadcast, and that a Contender Series date plus a UFC media day made London impossible.
The disagreement is already sitting next to a fight Joshua has publicly said White cannot promote. Fury and Joshua are still booked for Cardiff on Dec. 11. White’s next event is closer: Silva and Wang Cong meet Saturday in Salt Lake City for the vacant flyweight belt, after Valentina Shevchenko’s injury left the title open. Whether White’s production claim or Hearn’s contract claim controls the heavyweight show is the argument that will follow both men out of fight week.
