BOXING’S SHAME AS IT JUMPS INTO BED WITH CRIME BOSS
IT seems ever more likely that Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua will finally agree to stand in a room together. The harder part will be making space for them when there is already a giant elephant in the corner.
What was once boxing’s dirty secret is now its inconvenient truth — the most anticipated fight in British history could be down to the brokering skills of a man considered by Irish authorities to be a vicious crime lord.
But here we are, courtesy of Fury’s social media message on Wednesday afternoon that laid bare his appreciation for Daniel Kinahan, the 42-year-old from Dublin who made it all happen.
He said: ‘Big shout out to Dan, he got this done.’ Fury was shirtless as he said it, and with two other name-checks in his video, boxing may have just dropped its pants again. Because, as the wider UK population is becoming increasingly aware, Dan the man is really quite interesting.
He is the man who can demonstrably cross the trenches of boxing politics, and few are so deep as those separating Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn, the promoters of Fury and Joshua. The man who can negotiate with royalty in the Middle East.
‘An honest, intelligent guy who gives wise counsel,’ as told to
Sportsmail this week by Bob Arum, a legend in the business of boxing promotion. Where it gets rather sticky is the allegations around the other line of work.
Dan is the man whose gang is linked to multiple murders around Europe and reported to run a drugs empire worth one billion euros. The man who is said to be prohibited from entering the US after being on a list of narco-terrorists by the Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI.
The man identified in the High Court in Dublin two years ago as a key figure in global organised crime and the man whose involvement in this fight compelled the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar to say it would be ‘entirely appropriate’ for broadcasters to boycott it.
The man from whom, Fury’s British broadcaster, BT Sport, appeared to be distancing themselves yesterday, and pointedly added they would review all potential deals with ‘scrutiny’.
‘A very dangerous criminal trying to whitewash his reputation,’ as told to Sportsmail by Neale Richmond, a respected member of the Irish parliament. Let us start with a conversation
Sportsmail had late on Wednesday with Arum, who was once part of the US Attorney’s office. Today, aged 88, he is one of the pillars holding up Fury, serving as his co-promoter with Warren, while MTK Global look after Fury’s management, and Kinahan is labelled as an adviser to the fighter. Arum uses Kinahan as an adviser, as well, and his view on him is in equal parts revealing and startling.
‘I have heard all these stories about his background,’ he says. ‘I choose not to disbelieve them but to ignore them because as far as his interactions with me go, it has only been first class.
‘I disregard all the buzz you hear about his background. I am a business person and I have nothing but the highest respect for him.’
Buzz? It’s an extraordinary summary, really. On the wideranging cynicism, Arum adds: ‘I understand, but look at my background. When I met Ali and all the people in the organisation, the Nation of Islam, virtually all of them had criminal records but I found many to be trustworthy.’
But this is all a touch darker than what regularly passes through the sport. The Irish police believe Kinahan is the leader of the Kinahan crime group, having replaced his father, the convicted drug dealer Christy ‘the Dapper Don’ Kinahan, around five years ago.
The son has largely been exiled in Dubai following the start of a feud in 2016 with the Hutch gang, which has claimed 18 lives.
While he has not been convicted of anything, he was previously described in a Criminal Asset Bureau (CAB) affidavit to the High Court as managing and controlling the gang’s day-to-day drug trafficking operations.
It is against that backdrop Kinahan has been accused of using boxing to clean up his reputation. His link to the sport goes back to 2012, when he co-founded the Macklin’s Gym Marbella management group with former middleweight contender Matthew Macklin.
In 2016, the company was staging a weigh-in at Dublin’s Regency Hotel for an event it was promoting when gunmen entered. Kinahan is believed to have been the intended target of an attack that left one man dead.
He sold MGM in 2017 and it has since been rebranded as MTK
Global, which now has the likes of Fury, Carl Frampton and Billy Joe Saunders on their books.
As recently as last month, their CEO Sandra Vaughan denied Kinahan holds any formal role with MTK, but the damaging links are numerous. Indeed, a significant number of MTK clients, including Fury and Saunders, count him as an adviser. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by any fighter.
MTK did not respond to a question of how many of their boxers are advised by Kinahan who, in the estimation of one figure in boxing, is tipped to be the sport’s most influential character in the next five years.
Indisputably, the boxers rave about him. It chimes with the strong suspicion in Ireland that a clean-up of Kinahan’s image is taking place in tandem with his emergence into public life.
A broader view, a sober view, belongs to Richmond, of the Fine Gael political party.
‘He is notorious, easily our biggest crime boss,’ he tells
Sportsmail. ‘To hear Tyson Fury lionising him, he has whitewashed an extremely vicious track record. His background is something fight venues and broadcasters need to be aware of. It is tough to see a mob boss presented this way.’
It is. Not a surprise, sadly. But tough all the same.