Joe Molloy

The Minister of State for Sport, Brendan Griffin, started communications with British authorities where the fight may happen and British broadcasters.

Later, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the Dáil that there had been contact with authorities in the UAE regarding Kinnaghan.

Varadkar said he was, quote, taken aback by Tyson Fury and his video.

The results were immediate.

That same month, June 2020, KHK over in Bahrain announced they were cutting ties with Kinahan as their new special advisor.

The likes of CNN and the New York Times published critical stories about Kinahan and boxing.

That said...

It wasn't universal condemnation.

It's worth a glimpse as to how Kinnan had ascended up the boxing ranks where money and pragmatism tend to rule the day.

Here also in June 2020 is Bob Arum, legendary promoter in boxing.

His company Top Rank had signed a deal with MTK and ESPN in 2019, and he gave this verdict on all the controversy.

So Kinahan was still personal advisor to lots of high-profile boxers, and that was the official line as 2020 progressed.

And take this from Sandra Vaughan, speaking in May also of 2020.

No doubt there were lots of lies being told.

As for the boxing governing bodies, plural, an alphabet soup of different constituencies, well, they didn't seem overly perturbed.

Boxing is full of shady characters, after all.

And this was a world where lots of cities wanted big fights.

And of course, MTK still had its fighters.

Now, for non-boxing fans, we should say that this much-anticipated fight never happened.

It still hasn't happened, and there were a multitude of reasons for that at the time.