Frank Warren: Fury’s Saudi fight “the biggest event I have been involved with”

Tyson Fury’s promoter Frank Warren has told William Hill’s podcast, Up Front with Simon Jordan, that his exhibition bout with UFC fighter Francis Ngannou on October 28th is the biggest event he has been involved with. 

Featuring on William Hill’s Up Front with Simon Jordan, a podcast hosted by the former Crystal Palace owner who speaks to sports stars and celebrities and challenges their opinions whilst scrutinising their careers, Warren disputed the claim that their show wasn’t important: “How is the fight between Fury and Ngannou not game-changing? We are now promoting in Saudi Arabia. We aren’t relying on anyone else; we are putting events on and we aren’t sitting around.

“This is the biggest event I have ever been involved with,” the 71-year-old continued. “You’ve got the lineal champion and the number-one heavyweight in the UFC. The guy from the UFC has decided he wants to fight; I haven’t got a problem with that. It’s a massive, massive, massive event; the biggest event out there that will break box office records.”

Saudi boxing similar to pay-per-view beginnings 

While still on the topic of Saudi Arabia, Warren discussed the idea that boxing in the Asian country shares similarities with how pay-per-view fights began.

He said: “One of the problems we had with fighters before pay-per-view is they would have to go to Las Vegas. Do you know why? Because they get a site fee from a casino before you start.

“When I launched a pay-per-view fight with Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno – the first show on Sky – that was a game-changer because then we could start doing loads of shows over here with Showtime, a place where we launched a lot of fighters’ careers.

“With Saudi, this is a slightly similar situation. Where we are now, we are doing an event out there, and we are opening up the Riyadh Festival, which is huge.

“Saudi Arabia has all this criticism about it, but they are out there saying ‘This is our country’. Is it any different than when Roman Abramovich came to Chelsea or when the same thing happened to Manchester City?”

Wembley was penciled in for Joshua 

Looking back at his time as a promoter for Fury, the 71-year-old said about the lack of offers he has received for the WBC heavyweight champion since his last bout against Derek Chisora in December 2022.

“Tyson Fury is the only one of them who said he would do his fights in the UK whatever they generate; it’s the opposition that wouldn’t do the fights,” explained Warren. “We made offers, that’s a fact, but there’s not been one offer to Tyson Fury this year.

“He said to both of those guys (Joshua and Uysk) to fight in Wembley. We penciled it in, had the first hold on the dates at Wembley three times, and we booked West Ham’s stadium to do the fight.”