Hearn vs White: The Power Struggle for Fury vs Joshua
Eddie Hearn isn’t blinking. Not for Dana White, not for Las Vegas, not for a bigger cheque.
For Tyson Fury vs Anthony Joshua, he says the fight is coming home – or it isn’t happening at all.
Hearn vs White: The Power Struggle Behind the Superfight
The most anticipated heavyweight showdown of this era has drifted into a political scrap, and Hearn has planted his flag firmly in British soil.
Dana White has publicly accused Hearn of stalling the fight, calling it “the weirdest thing ever” that negotiations have supposedly been halted. From White’s side, the story is simple: Hearn is the obstacle stopping Fury–Joshua from being finalised, and from being moved to a major U.S. venue.
Hearn’s response? The deal, as far as he’s concerned, is already done – and it’s a British deal.
“Dana White says we are the only one upsetting this fight,” Hearn told iFL TV, before laying out his version of events: White tried to muscle in on a fight he has “nothing to do with,” tried to persuade Sela to tear up an existing agreement and shift the bout from the U.K. to America.
From Hearn’s perspective, the problem isn’t resistance from Matchroom. It’s resistance to ripping up a contract already signed.
All he and Joshua want, he insists, is for the original bout agreement to be honoured.
Joshua’s Line in the Sand
Strip away the noise, and the core of this saga sits with one man: Anthony Joshua.
According to Hearn, Joshua has already turned down “many millions more” to take the fight in the U.S. The decision, Hearn stresses, was Joshua’s, not his promoter’s.
Joshua, he says, cares where the fight happens. Cares about British boxing. Cares about the contract he signed.
That stance has stunned some on the American side of the talks. Hearn claims White believes every fighter has a price, that “you can throw a little bit of money at someone and they’ll dance to your f*cking tune.” Not this time, Hearn says. Not with Joshua.
“That is why, unfortunately for these people, the fight will not be taking place in America, because Anthony Joshua is not a sellout.”
It’s a bold line, and one that will play well with a British public desperate to see the country’s two heavyweight giants collide on home soil.
Contract Signed, Location in Limbo
Both Fury and Joshua have done their part in the ring to keep the dream alive, Fury beating Mariusz Wach and Joshua dispatching Kristian Prenga to maintain momentum toward their collision. Ring Magazine has already floated the end of 2026 as the target window.
Yet for all the noise, there is still no confirmed date. No confirmed venue. Just a signed contract and a tug-of-war over geography.
Hearn insists the delay in an official announcement lies on the American side of the fence, pointing to White’s efforts to drag the fight to the U.S. and the offers of extra money that followed.
He says Joshua was presented with two clear options: more money in America, or the original deal in Britain. The former heavyweight champion, he claims, barely hesitated.
“I just want to stick to the original contract. I want to do this fight in the U.K.”
That, Hearn says, was the moment the mood shifted. The British public had already made their feelings known online. Joshua saw it. Hearn saw it. And it hardened their stance.
Britain Bites Back
Hearn is adamant that fan reaction has become a driving force. The social media response, he says, has “made us double down our principles on this.”
He rejects accusations of “fake patriotism,” points out that if Joshua took the bigger American purse, Hearn himself would earn more as well. If he were obsessed only with money, the U.S. would suit him just fine.
Instead, he’s gone the other way.
“We want the fight in Britain,” he says simply.
Behind the scenes, Hearn says they’ve been in “constant communication” with Netflix and Sela, not renegotiating the fight – the contract is already signed, he keeps repeating – but working on the logistics of staging it in the U.K. He expects an official announcement to come from Turki Alalshikh and believes they are “in a great position to move forward.”
He even goes as far as to joke that if the fight lands in Britain, Joshua “should be knighted in the process.”
Hyperbole? Maybe. But it underlines the sense of national theatre around this event.
Cardiff, Wembley and the Stage for History
Where, then, if Britain wins this tug-of-war, does the biggest fight in U.K. boxing history actually land?
Hearn admits Principality Stadium in Cardiff is his personal preference – the roof, the atmosphere, the reliability of a controlled environment. Yet he recognises the global pull of Wembley Stadium, the iconic London venue that screams “world event” every time it’s full.
Either way, he’s clear on one thing: the final call rests with Joshua.
“My instructions from Anthony Joshua are make sure this fight is in the U.K.,” Hearn says. That, more than any promoter’s ego or broadcaster’s wish list, is the line that has held.
He also points the finger directly at those he believes tried hardest to derail that: Dana White and Nick Khan. In Hearn’s telling, they “tried desperately” to bring the fight to the U.S. and keep it out of the U.K., with White openly stating he did not want the bout on British soil.
Yet as the weeks drag on, Hearn believes reality is sinking in across the table. The British reaction, he says, has been impossible to ignore. Turki Alalshikh, he claims, has seen it too and is now “excited” by the prospect of staging the fight in the U.K.
A Fight Bigger Than a Purse
Underneath the public jabs and the promoter politics sits a rare thing in modern boxing: a superstar refusing the bigger cheque to keep a promise and protect a stage.
If Hearn’s version holds, Joshua has left millions on the table to fight at home. In an era where site fees from the U.S. and the Middle East routinely dictate where mega-fights land, that’s a striking stance.
Hearn believes the payoff, if the U.K. gets it, will be seismic.
“We get this fight over the line for the U.K., wait until you see the reaction,” he says. “It could be the biggest sporting event ever in the U.K. We know it’s the biggest fight ever.”
The contract is signed. The rivalry is real. The money is there on both sides of the Atlantic.
Now the sport waits on one decision: will Fury–Joshua echo through British night air, or will boxing’s biggest modern epic be dragged away from the place that made them?
