Dana White questions Joshua-Fury desire as venue dispute deepens

Dana White has voiced fresh frustration over the unresolved Anthony Joshua-Tyson Fury negotiations, questioning whether both sides truly want the long-discussed heavyweight fight as the row over its location continues.

Joshua and Fury have agreed to meet in an all-UK bout between two former heavyweight champions, but the event has still not been formally announced. The central issue is no longer whether the fight has been discussed in serious terms, but where and when it will take place, with New York and Madison Square Garden widely understood to be the preferred option for several key parties, while Joshua and Eddie Hearn continue to push for the United Kingdom.

White, the UFC chief executive and frontman for Zuffa Boxing, said during the UFC 330 post-fight press conference in Philadelphia that the process had become a test of intent. “Listen, this f****** saga, we’ll see how this whole thing plays out. I mean, they either want to fight, or they don’t. I don’t know,” White said.

Asked whether the fight would take place in New York, White pointed to the financial scale of the event and suggested the decision should be straightforward. “We’ll see. Listen, to make a fight, two guys have to want to fight, period, end of story. Contracts, and this and that. There’s a lot of f****** money for grabs in this fight. Do you want to fight? Or do you not want to fight? I don’t give a s*** one way or the other. It’s up to them.”

White was also asked if he would be happy for the fight to be staged in the UK, the location Hearn says was stipulated in Joshua’s contract. “Yeah, listen, I don’t give a s***. Do you want to fight? Or do you not want to fight? The fight should have happened 10 years ago. Is it going to happen now? We’ll see.” White also claimed again during the press conference that he had done the deal with Netflix and the venue for Joshua-Fury.

New York push meets UK resistance

The dispute has sharpened because Matchroom chairman Hearn maintains that Joshua’s agreement was based on the fight taking place on home soil. BoxingScene has reported that New York is close to being the chosen location, with Madison Square Garden the venue, and that Turki Alalshikh and Netflix are understood to prefer the United States because of the expected broadcast upside. Deposits are also understood to have been paid to Madison Square Garden, although Joshua remains the crucial holdout.

Hearn has said the contract cannot simply be moved to America without Joshua’s approval. Speaking to The Punch Podcast, he said: “Everybody wants to do the fight in New York apart from Anthony Joshua and me. We are under a huge amount of pressure, and we are being told by Turki Al-Alshikh and those guys that Netflix, in particular, really want to do the fight in the US.

“It’s like, ‘we are partners, we are paying a lot of money, you have to understand that we need to put the fight in where we feel is, commercially, the best place’. I don’t agree with their arguments, but I am not paying the money.

“But, we wouldn’t have signed the contract if the fight was in America. So, we have to have a discussion around that.”

Hearn also warned that an announcement for New York without a revised agreement could collapse the fight. “The other day they wrote to us and said, ‘just to let you know, we would like to announce the fight for New York’ and I said, ‘no, you can’t’. There might even be a situation where they go for it and do announce it, and you will probably see me coming out quite quickly and say, ‘no fight’.

“I promise you, if they announce that fight without an agreement in place to change the venue, there will be no fight and we ain’t bluffing. We feel really strongly that this fight should be in the UK.”

Hearn has also acknowledged that Joshua’s side could price any venue switch high enough to make the UK more attractive. “We kind of want to say, ‘well, if you want do it in America, you have got to pay us all of this money to change,’ because we are not really bothered about the money, we want it in England. So, we want to make it so much money that they just say, ‘you know what, let’s just do it in England’, that is our dream scenario.”

White has taken a different view of the commercial reality. “We’re the ones that have done all the deals for this fight,” White told Sky Sports. “I did the deal for the venue, that’s why I know where the venue is. At the end of the day, here’s the truth, you’re going to go where the money is.”

Hearn has pushed back on the idea that New York is already settled, while leaving open the possibility that Joshua could eventually agree to a change. “I feel like myself and Anthony Joshua are the last men standing, with the Union Jack, saying ‘we shall not be moved’,” Hearn told Track Radio. “But in reality, we’re doing everything we can to keep this fight in the UK. [New York] can’t be [a done deal] because it’s a breach of contract, unless we agree.

“By the way, I’m not saying there’s no chance of us agreeing, but at the moment we remain firm. Anthony Joshua’s instruction to me is, ‘we’re fighting for it in the UK, do everything you can to get this fight in the UK.’

“But we also understand we’re under a lot of pressure. Netflix want it in America. Turki Alalshikh wants it in America. Sounds like Tyson Fury wants it in America. So, you know, we’ll keep fighting the fight but I can’t tell you how it’s going to play out.”

The argument comes after both heavyweights took interim contests intended to keep the larger fight alive. Fury stopped 46-year-old Mariusz Wach in seven rounds in Thailand, winning by corner retirement, before Joshua survived a far more dramatic return in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where Kristian Prenga dropped him twice in the opening round before Joshua came back to stop him in the second. White previously criticised the tune-up route before the planned meeting.

The next step is whether the parties can agree to alter Joshua’s UK venue clause or find a compromise that allows the fight to be announced. If organisers move publicly on New York without Joshua and Hearn signing off, Hearn has made clear he will treat that as a deal-breaking breach rather than a promotional formality.