Fury vs. Joshua in 2021: It’s a Big Can of Worms

“Tyson Fury is at best uneducated and foolish; at worst, a battered boxer choosing to ignore the murderous elephant in the ring.” So said the editorial writer for the Irish Daily Star responding to the news that there was an agreement in principle for two fights between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua next year.

Tyson Fury broke the news on Instagram. In the video clip, he thanked Daniel Kinahan for brokering the deal – thanked him three times in a clip that lasted less than a minute. And therein lies the rub.

In the eyes of multiple law enforcement agencies, Kinahan is a gangster – the fulcrum of an international drug cartel whose hirelings have been on both sides of more than a dozen grisly murders. “The fact that he is being hailed as some savior of boxing…(is) an insult to the thousands of lives he has helped ruin,” said the Daily Star editorialist.

The name Kinahan first surfaced in these pages in February of 2016 in a story prompted by a brazen gangland shooting earlier that month in Dublin. Hired guns dressed as policemen and carrying assault rifles burst into a hotel ballroom where the weigh-in was being conducted for a boxing show to be held on Feb. 6 at Dublin’s National Stadium. One man was killed and several others were wounded in what was believed to be retaliation for the murder of a member of a rival cartel.

The show, which was cancelled in the wake of the incident, was co-promoted by MGM, the initials standing for Macklin Gym Marbella (not to be confused with the MGM Grand or any of its sister properties).

The gym, situated in the Marbella district of Costa del Sol on the southern coast of Spain, was allegedly owned by former British and European middleweight champion Matthew Macklin, a close friend of Daniel Kinahan, but the conventional wisdom is that Macklin was merely a front for the Kinahan family. Daniel, who turns 43 this week, is the oldest of Christy Kinahan’s two sons. In the 1980s, the elder Kinahan served six years in prison for crimes related to heroin and was subsequently convicted of money laundering in Ireland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Like his son, he currently lives in Dubai.

MGM subsequently changed its name to MTK Global. There are now 15 gyms worldwide either open or in development that operate under the MTK banner or are affiliated with the company. They are found on five continents. And the company has evolved into something much more than a gym operator. MTK Global bills itself as the World’s Foremost Boxer Management Company and as such they are committed to enhancing their clients’ earnings outside the ring through endorsements and sponsorships.

MTK Global has more than 100 boxers under contract including such notables as Tyson Fury, Michael Conlan, Carl Frampton, Billy Joe Saunders, Josh Taylor, and fast-rising heavyweight prospect Guido Vianello.

The Kinahans are purportedly no longer connected to MTK Global. However, Daniel Kinahan, from his base in the Persian Gulf, is seemingly poised to become “Mr. Big” in the business of boxing. Among other things, he is a special advisor to KHK Sports, a fast-rising sports media company owned by the stupendously wealthy royal family of Bahrain, a small nation connected to the mainland of Saudi Arabia by a 16-mile causeway.

Daniel Kinahan

Leo Varadkar, the Prime Minister of Ireland, has called on sports and media organizations to boycott the event. “Maybe they don’t know the facts or they don’t know the truth but they need to know them” he said. The Daily Star, a tabloid with a heavy sports orientation, promises that if a Fury-Joshua comes off and that if Kinahan is involved, they will not send a correspondent to cover the event.

The leading sports networks in the U.K. were quick to distance themselves from the brouhaha, but without going so far as to consent to a boycott. “We have not been involved in negotiations for a possible Joshua-Fury fight. All our broadcast deals are subject to careful consideration,” said a spokesperson for Sky Sports.

Of course, all this talk is premature. Fury and Joshua have intervening fights that could spoil the soup. And in the age of COVID-19, it seems particularly imprudent to project that far into the future.

But the plot will thicken. Stay tuned.

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