Shadowy figure key to Fury mega bout
OPINION: It should have been an announcement to savour, a moment to confirm that two epochdefining fights between Britain’s world heavyweight champions would finally happen, with all four belts on the line. Except, three seconds into a Tyson Fury home video, heralding his planned bouts in 2021 with Anthony Joshua, matters started to become a little strange.
‘‘I’ve just got off the phone to Daniel Kinahan,’’ he began. It is always politic to name-check the negotiator on these occasions, but Fury did it three times in the space of a minute. ‘‘Big shout-out to Dan’’ and ‘‘Dan got this deal over the line’’. And that, so far as he and his acolytes were concerned, was that. All hail Dan the Man.
Before anyone dared point out that dates and venues had not even been discussed, or that neither boxer had signed a contract, the tumble-dryer of hype entered its most frantic cycle yet. Who was the more lethal puncher? Would Fury, as he has already promised to do with Deontay Wilder later this year, knock Joshua ‘‘spark out’’? The trash-talk ignored one crucial question, though. Who, pray, was this mysterious Mr Kinahan?
Inside boxing, there was scant attempt to explain. In an extended analysis segment on BBC Radio 5 Live, the subject was not broached once. But while silence has prevailed in the UK, a far more troubling picture of Kinahan has emerged in Ireland. Contrary to Fury’s protestations, his ‘‘adviser’’ is not simply a dealmaker extraordinaire. Now residing in the Middle East, Kinahan was, in July 2018, accused in the High Court in Dublin of being a senior figure in a global network of organised crime.
Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau said that he ‘‘controlled and managed’’ the operations of the Kinahan Organised Crime Group, which has smuggled drugs and guns into Ireland, the UK and mainland Europe and ‘‘has associations that facilitate international criminal activity in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America’’. The son of drugs kingpin Christy ‘‘Dapper Don’’ Kinahan, he has no criminal convictions, but he is banned from entering the United States after being placed on a list of narcoterrorists.
With any American avenues of escape closed off, Kinahan has taken to reinventing himself in the Middle East. Only last month, he was appointed as an adviser to a sports company in Bahrain. His employers described him as an ‘‘international boxing power broker’’, and not without justification, for his opening salvo has apparently been to deliver Fury versus Joshua, the highestprofile fight in a generation.
Eddie Hearn, Joshua’s promoter, claims to be unaware of the allegations against Kinahan. But in Ireland, Kinahan’s connection to what should be a luminous sporting spectacle has been greeted with revulsion. One Irish publication has already vowed not to cover either fight in protest, while Kinahan’s sinister past was raised yesterday at the highest level of Irish government.
Responding to a question from Labour leader Alan Kelly, Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach, said he was ‘‘taken aback’’ to watch the Fury video, dropping ‘‘that name that you mentioned as if this was somebody who did not have quite a chequered history in this state and elsewhere’’.
As Fury banged the drum about his adviser’s brilliance, his best advice, as usual, would have been to keep his mouth shut. For in ethical terms, the greatest prize fights in British history are now a race to the bottom of the well.
The combination of Fury’s lack of a British boxing licence and Kinahan’s prohibition from entering the US means that the fight venue will, in all likelihood, come down to a choice between Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates.
What should be the grandest of nights at Wembley Stadium will instead become a game of Name Your Despot. We have been here before. Seven months ago, Hearn whisked Joshua away for a ??70 million payday in the Arabian Desert.
There were howls of indignation about the Saudis’ abysmal human rights record, but Hearn was able to turn to the battalion of journalists and shrug: ‘‘Well, you’re still here.’’ Sell it and they will come: it is the eternal truth upon which boxing’s monumental cynicism is built.
Hearn has since said that he would head back to Riyadh in a heartbeat. After all, there are worse options, mid-pandemic, than to decamp to a purpose-built venue miles from the nearest civilisation. And he could be sure that thousands would follow him.
To engage with boxing’s superstars at any level is to sign up to a Faustian pact. Floyd Mayweather knew the deal: by promoting his own fights, he had the prerogative to throw out any reporter who dared to bring up his history of domestic violence.
The Fury-Joshua extravaganza is being constructed on a similar premise, with an expectation that the promoter’s links to a notorious Dublin gang will simply be airbrushed so long as the sport is stellar enough. Never mind the reminders of boxing’s dark heart. This is a sport rapidly proving it lacks any heart at all.
Daily Telegraph