Don’t let Hearn vs White distract you – Frank Warren is a true heavyweight promoter
It is a long way from Joe Bugner fighting in a hotel banquet suite in 1982 to the heavyweight championship of the world on Saturday night at the O2.
Frank Warren has made that journey with heavyweights in just about every size and shape and condition; Saturday is the third time he has made the journey to a heavyweight world-title fight this year, which is a statistic that would have been considered pure fantasy back in the Eighties.
On Saturday night, Fabio Wardley will try and regain his WBO heavyweight title from Daniel Dubois in a rematch of their savage and bloody first fight back in May; Dubois won in the 11th and survived two early knockdowns. Since that memorable night in Manchester, Warren’s young heavyweight Moses Itauma lost an IBF heavyweight-title fight at the O2 in August. It was a shocking end for Itauma, who was only 21 that night. It was just part of the heavyweight story for Warren.
A story that started with Bugner at the Bloomsbury Crest hotel continued with George Foreman at the London Arena and Mike Tyson at the MEN in Manchester. Warren’s has been a long association with boxing’s big men, and it continues after Saturday night when Tyson Fury fights Anthony Joshua in December; Warren is one of the official promoters.
“It has been some year,” said Warren. “The first fight between Daniel and Fabio was an unbelievable fight; it was like something out of a Hollywood film.”
The road to Saturday’s rematch has taken some wicked turns in a heavyweight division that has always been unpredictable. There are boxers and then there are heavyweights, and they are a different breed.
It has not always been glory, and a lot of heavyweights under Warren’s banner never quite made it; Pele Reid, Danny Williams, Funso Banjo and Delicious Orie just last year. Banjo was an imposing, fearsome fighter, and he once fought former world champion Greg Page in north London; Orie, an Olympian and Commonwealth Games champion, had one pro fight and walked away from the sport.
The major successes at heavyweight started with Frank Bruno beating Oliver McCall for the WBC heavyweight title in 1995, then Herbie Hide won the WBO version in 1997, and it was about 20 years later before Warren started working with Fury.
Right now, Warren also has a promotional agreement with the IBF champion Filip Hrgovic, and the WBC champion Agit Kabayel. Don King once owned all the heavyweight champions and the top-10 contenders – Warren is straying into that heavyweight landscape.
The last seven or eight years have been the greatest for British heavyweights ever; Fury, Joshua, Dubois, Wardley, Dillian Whyte, Derek “Del Boy” Chisora and a dozen contenders have won and lost world-title fights, mostly on British soil.
Warren and Eddie Hearn have been dominant, first as enemies, then as partners and now as smart rivals – especially key with American Dana White wading in and starting a promotional war with Hearn, while insisting that he will promote Fury vs Joshua.
On Saturday, Warren will take his seat in the front row to watch two of his boxers fight for a world title, and somewhere on the undercard he will cast an eye over Adam Olaniyan, who is just 20 and has won all four of his fights at heavyweight by stoppage. In heavyweight boxing, the future never ends.