Dana White Fires Back at Eddie Hearn Over Fury-Joshua Role

Dana White wants everyone to slow down before writing him out of the biggest heavyweight fight of the winter. On Thursday, the UFC CEO pushed back hard on the idea that he's been frozen out of Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua, confirming his team isn't just promoting the event — they're producing the whole broadcast, which lands on Netflix on Dec. 11 from Cardiff.

The dispute kicked off after White skipped the first London press conference, where Eddie Hearn (for Joshua) and Frank Warren (for Fury) shared the stage. White's Zuffa Boxing partner Nick Khan was in the room, seated next to Saudi financier Turki Alalshikh, but the absence of White himself gave Hearn an opening. He took it, branding the past seven days one of boxing's great PR disasters and declaring he'd been right all along that White wouldn't really be involved.

White's Version

White's explanation for the no-show was mundane: he'd run Contender Series the day before and had to be back in Utah, and the London trip was simply too rough to squeeze in. The bigger point, he argued, is that none of this changes the facts. He said he's promoting the fight and the UFC is producing the entire show, and he doesn't see how that qualifies as any kind of disaster.

He didn't stop there. White framed the whole spat as a difference in temperament — himself focused on the work, Hearn chasing a PR win and a camera. His blunt summary: Hearn likes to talk, and talking tends to get people into trouble.

There's paperwork backing White up, at least on the production question. The original Netflix release attached his name to the promotion, and the streamer appears set to lean on the UFC's broadcast team to assemble the event. That's the same machine that's handled some of Netflix's splashiest combat-sports nights, so the 'who's actually running this' question has a fairly clear answer.

The sporting stakes are enormous. Joshua arrives at 29-4 with 26 knockouts, a puncher's résumé that makes every heavyweight assignment a 50/50 on paper. Whatever happens behind the scenes, two of Britain's biggest names finally share a ring — and the man building the broadcast says he never went anywhere.