Saudi Boxing Boss’s Dua Lipa Dig Overshadows Fury-Joshua Cardiff Announcement

The long-awaited first face-off between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua should have been the headline moment at Olympia London on Wednesday. Instead, it was an odd aside about pop star Dua Lipa from Saudi boxing power broker Turki Alalshikh that had the room buzzing after a largely flat press conference to launch the December 11 “Battle of Britain” at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.

Alalshikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority and the man bankrolling the bout, used part of his remarks to explain why the fight ended up in Wales rather than London or, as had long been expected, Madison Square Garden in New York. In doing so, he took an unprompted swipe at Lipa, suggesting the singer had snubbed the event.

“I will be honest today, I know that London wouldn’t give me the stadium until 2am, and I know that Dua Lipa will not perform in the stadium, because she doesn’t like boxing, and maybe she doesn’t like me,” Alalshikh said, drawing puzzled reactions from those gathered for what was billed as the formal launch of one of British boxing’s biggest domestic superfights in decades.

The comment appeared to stem from the logistics of scheduling. With the fight being built around an American pay-per-view audience, a start time in the early hours of the UK morning was reportedly non-negotiable — a demand that ruled out London venues unwilling to grant access that late, and, according to Alalshikh, made any entertainment slot featuring Lipa a non-starter regardless.

Beyond the strange detour into pop-star politics, Alalshikh used the platform to underline just how much it cost to keep the fight on British soil. He said he accepted a $70 million hit in potential revenue to stage the bout in the UK rather than in a more lucrative time zone or location.

“Nobody questioned me about UK. I love the British people, I try to deliver everything for them,” he said. “Put yourself in my shoes, there’s a situation to lose $70m, the best is to have it in a good time zone.” He added that Cardiff won out largely because London simply wouldn’t accommodate the required 2am stadium access. “Wales delivered it, it’s still UK, the town of Ryan Giggs, let’s do it,” he said.

The financial sacrifices were not confined to the promotional side. Eddie Hearn, Joshua’s longtime promoter, revealed that his fighter personally gave up a significant sum — at least $10 million — to ensure the fight happened in Britain rather than overseas.

Hearn described a tense phone call in which Joshua was torn between the financial upside of fighting abroad and the emotional pull of headlining at home. “All of a sudden, people are saying, ‘Please bring the fight to the UK.’ He started feeling it, and I had to phone him up,” Hearn recalled. “AJ’s one of those guys, he goes to me, ‘Well, whatever you think,’ and I’m like, ‘No, no, no. It’s your money.’”

According to Hearn, Joshua ultimately had to turn down an eight-figure sum to keep the bout in Britain. “He says, ‘What do you think I should do?’ I said, ‘I think the UK is where the fight should be. I think there’s an element and an edge for you to have this fight in the UK. But it’s a lot of money.’ And he went, ‘F*** it. We’ll do it in the UK.’ Eight-figure difference,” Hearn said.

The financial wrangling and Alalshikh’s odd comments about Lipa threatened to distract from what is otherwise a landmark announcement for British boxing: two of the country’s most decorated heavyweights, finally sharing a stage after years of false starts and stalled negotiations, set to meet in front of a home crowd in Cardiff on December 11.

Whatever the entertainment lineup ends up looking like — with or without a Dua Lipa appearance — the fight itself promises to be one of the most significant domestic heavyweight clashes in a generation, even if Wednesday’s launch event will be remembered as much for a bizarre celebrity aside as for the boxing matchup it was meant to promote.