5 Live Boxing with Steve Bunce - Dana White on Fury v Joshua

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Just how involved is Dana White in the Fury v Joshua fight and why has it sparked a war of words with Eddie Hearn? In this bonus episode, the Zuffa Boxing boss sits down with Buncey to reveal his role in the Cardiff fight, address his ongoing feud with Hearn and explain whether he had any part in negotiating the contracts with both fighters.

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visit connectsonterio.ca. This is 5 live boxing. So Anthony Joshua and Tyson Furey is signed, sealed and nearly delivered. December 11th for the Principality Stadium in Cardiff. Nearly 700,000 people applied for tickets. It is obviously sold out. But there's still another struggle, another battle, if you like, between Eddie Hearn, the official promoter and Dana White of Zuffa Boxing.

Now, Dana insists that he's involved. Is he promoting? Is he producing? Or is he, as is being said by Eddie Hearn bluffing? Well, I sat down with Dana White, got a 50-minute exclusive to actually find out exactly what it is he's doing and what it is he'll be doing on the night. I'm Steve Bunce and this is Five Live Boxing.

Let's get down to what we've got to talk about here. Now, I don't know your role. What I'd like to work out if we can here is what is your official role with this fight? I am producing the fight. Me and my team will be producing the fight that night and obviously, I guess we'll call me one of the promotion. promoters of the event, you know, because you do have Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn that are both

promoters, too, promoting the event. You know, we did all the scaling for the tickets and, you know, the on sale and all that good stuff. So that means a lot of behind-the-scenes style stuff, the stuff that might be classified as boring, the scaling of the tickets. I mean, that's, the stuff that's at the very nerve center of a big promotion. Yeah. Shaked Turkey and Sela had me come in and help them out with this event. And I'm not in here to, you know, the problem with the whole Eddie thing is Eddie's made this more about him than AJ versus Fury. He and I are not the story of this, of this fight. This fight is finally happening.

Two of the greatest British heavyweights of all time are finally going to face off in a fight that fans have obviously been dying to see, or there wouldn't be over 500,000 people in the queue to buy tickets and basically the thing's going to sell out. in less than 24 hours. That's the story, not me and Eddie. Were you asked to come in by Turkey personally? Yes. Why was it, do you think, that Eddie was screaming and shouting so much? I have no idea.

It was surprising to me, too. You know, and I've known Eddie for a while, but I didn't really know Eddie until, you know, I got into the business. And I don't know. I can't explain why he reacted the way that he has. The last thing when I spoke to Eddie, which was about 10 days ago at a fight, he said that he was going to reach out to Turkey Alashake and perhaps the three of you or one or two others would have a sit-down,

a kind of a war conference and maybe sort of if there were any differences, any misunderstandings, you know, and get your stuff done and get your stuff sorted. Is that been arranged? Is it a fixture yet? No. None of that has happened and I haven't heard anything about it other than anything publicly. but there's nothing to figure out. I have said from the beginning that I am involved in this fight. I just said recently I'm producing this fight,

and everything that I've said has been absolutely true. Here we are today. And there's nothing for me and Eddie to work out. It's not about me and Eddie. It has nothing to do with me and Eddie. This is about Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua and the British boxing fans. Yeah, which is exactly what Frank Warren says. but would you, would you sit down with Eddie?

Would you shake his hand sit down? Or do you not need to sit down or do you not need to shake his hand? I would. We don't need to. There's no need for it. You know, for what? You know, he and I have talked a lot of smack back and forth. But, yeah, I don't, listen, I dislike Oscar de La Jolla very much.

I don't hate Eddie Hearn. I don't. I don't. I, you know, he's acted like a lunatic here over the last however many, you know, weeks or months or whatever you want, however long it's been. But, uh, yeah, I am producing this fight. I am one of the promoters of this fight. End of story. As I say, so there's no actual hate or dislike, you know, even though, you know, he put out the video last week and you've said this and he said that, but there's no genuine animosity between the two of you. Well, not on this side.

I mean, I'm, I'm actually bored with this now. I mean, talking about it is absolutely boring. Whatever, I'm at a press conference, they're like, hey, Eddie Hurts, I'm just like, oh my God, who cares? This isn't about me and Eddie Hearn. It's about A.J. and Fury. It's about this heavyweight fight. Which is exactly what Frank Warder said. Now, Eddie insisted last week

that there was an offer for AJ to fight in New York, and it was at least 10 million US dollars. Was that offer? Was that an offer from you or was it an offer from Turkey Alashai? Do you know anything about that offer or is that something that you don't know about? No, I do know that they were going back and forth, but that was between Turkey and AJ, yeah.

You talk about being involved with the ticket pricing. Were you involved with the original two contracts that the box has received for the fight, Dana? The one that Tyson Fury had and the one that AJ had. This is going back to April and May. Were you involved with those? No. That was Turkey, yeah.

Sella and Turkey. When did Turkey speak to you specifically about you coming on as a producer of this fight? Can you remember rough dates? As soon as I started talking about it publicly, whatever date that was when I talked about it publicly that I was going to promote the fight, that was when he had asked me. So going forward from here, we are, whenever we are nine weeks out, what's Dana White's schedule with regards to A.J. and Fury. looking like. Now from here on out, it's all focused on the production of the event. Will you be in Cardiff during the week of the fight? It doesn't clash with a massive UFC fight.

UFC show somewhere, does it? Yeah, I'll be both. I will do the fight in Cardiff and then fly straight to Vegas for UFC. Will you have wanted to have spoken to Eddie? Because as you say, it's become a little bit of an Eddie and Dana show leading up to the fight. And I just It's an Eddie show. It's an Eddie show. Not a Dana and Eddie show.

I'm focused on Fury and AJ, not Eddie Hearn. This is, you know, I've seen this thing where Eddie said, you know, at the press conference, he and I, at the press conference, it's about AJ and Fury. Who gives a shit? What me and Eddie might have to say to each other. It's boring now. It's just, this is about AJ and Fury. This was never the Dana. Eddie show. It's been all the Eddie show. Let's look at some of the real positives here. It's just

the size of the event, the amount of tickets that are being, you know, as you say, 502,000 people were queuing up on Ticketmaster. Another 180,000 were trying to go through the principalities' own ticket office. So, you know, nearly 700,000 people. You've been involved with some big events. I suppose this is a redundant question. You've never been involved with anything this big, have you? Well, yeah. I mean, the the McGregor Mayweather fight was like this, was massive. One of the biggest gates of all time. Yeah.

Yeah, I have been involved in stuff like this before. Can I ask you, in all of the stuff that's going on, you know, he said, she said, and whether you're doing this or whether you're doing that, have you actually had a time to step back and look at it and look at the fight? And what type of fight do you think we'll get on the night? Yeah, I think that these guys are going to go out and, you know, both guys are going to try to finish each other.

It should be a fun, exciting, heavyweight fight. You know, anybody who's watching this, and if you don't live in the UK, and you haven't been to a UK sporting event or fight, whether it's UFC or boxing, you should jump on one of these 700 tickets that are left. I think that, you know, I'm excited. UK sports are just different when you get in there.

And, you know, you're going to have, the split crowd. Everybody's from the UK, but you're going to have the Fury fans and the AJ fans. And I'm excited for the amount of electricity that's going to be in that building that night, especially with that many people. And now that it is,

now that it has landed in Britain, you know, in the Welsh capital in Cardiff, and there has been this amount of interest. Are you happy enough that it's here and not in Las Vegas or Los Angeles or New York? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I am. And, you know, you've got to give credit to Eddie for really grinding that and making sure that it happened in the UK. I would agree. And I'm a little bit concerned that we're finished the interview with you giving credit to Eddie Hur. What's up to all of the stuff we've had for the last six weeks? All of that rubbish. Let's end all that now. Let's just do positive stuff going forward.

Can we do that? Yeah. Hey, listen, I've been out of the whole, you know, back and forth thing with him for weeks now. I'm tired and bored with it. It's all ridiculous and makes no sense. It's not about us. It's about the fighters. You know, he got the fight in the UK.

It's happening there. Ticket sales are off the charts. And now we're looking, you know, down the barrel of a great UK heavyweight fight. And I'm excited to be there and watch it live. Dana, thanks very much for your time. Thank you for having me, sir. I'll see you soon. So that's Dana White talking to me.

We're a bit clearer. It's still a bit, still, I don't know, it's still maybe not as clear as it could be. He's obviously going to be involved. He's got all of the television expertise from 25 years of the UFC and those blockbusters. And I guess that could be classified as promoted. Not officially promoting.

The border control have not got him listed as a promoter. Hey, hopefully I've cleared it up a little bit for you. Now, on Monday, we'll be back with the first of the pods for the week leading up to Fabio Wardley, challenging Daniel Dubois. They met in May, fight of the year, when Fabio lost his world title to Dubois.

This is the rematch. It's live and exclusive on Five Live next Saturday from another sold-out venue, The O2. I'm Steve Bunce, and this has been Five Live boxing. Wayne Rooney here. If you want to hear more from me, head over to the Wayne Rooney Show on BBC Sounds today to listen back to chat I have with the likes of Bruno Fernandez

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