FLOAT LIKE A BEE Frank Warren Q&A: A HEAVY HEART
FW: Because it is the big men, and because it’s the ultimate thing in the sport. My favorite fighter of all time, who I enjoyed watching live, however, was [Sugar] Ray Leonard. He was special, and he had everything. And he did everything. On your point on the interest in heavyweights, just a little later on in the heavyweight division, after Ali and Joe Frazier et al., was Larry Holmes. I love him. He was a great fighter. He had the best jab in boxing. He gets accolades, but over time I don’t think he gets all the accolades which he deserves. For me, he was one of the best heavyweight champions in history.
Warren insists the division is very healthy and looks forward to a year that he hopes will culminate in a Fury- Joshua megafight. The Ring: Frank, what’s so special about heavyweight boxing for you? Frank Warren: When I was a kid, probably the most famous boxer in the world was Muhammad Ali, if not the most recognized face in the world. Ali was the man. It has always been a special division, and it is called the blue ribbon division for a reason. The Ring: Do you remember watching him in the early ’60s? FW: Yes, I was a kid then. Ali was the man. He obviously fought twice in London against Henry Cooper, but I can remember the funny thing being that the older generation did not like him at the time. He was the original marmite. They loved him or they loathed him. I did not understand that, because he stood out for me. He was a superstar, and Ali would have been incredible in any era. He had the star qualities, the charisma and of course the great skills he showed in the ring. The Ring: Ten years later, into your 20s during the 1970s, you created the National Boxing Council. People might call it unlicensed boxing, but it was basically a commission to legitimize your events and challenge the monopoly – with the Boxing Board and televised fights – that the dominant promoters had in the day. FW: My first promotion was with the heavyweight Lenny McLean, who was a relation of mine – a bit of a bully, to be quite honest – and it happened literally by accident, and that was it. I got into the boxing game and got bitten by the bug. The Ring: Sticking to the heavyweight theme, people have got a fascination for the division, perhaps more than any other. Why, in your view?
Germany as they could generate from American TV. They had a few fights in America, but the power base was the German market. The Ring: I did report on two Wladimir Klitschko fights in New York, and he was almost booed out of the arena. I remember the late, great Bert Randolph Sugar saying to me, sitting in the media seats, ‘Wake me up when the fight breaks out.’ Klitschko did not throw a right hand sometimes until a few rounds into a fight. FW: They were very, very technical fighters, clever guys, and they played to their strengths. But they weren’t
exciting to watch, even though Vitali had that terrific fight with Lennox, and Wladimir had the great fight with Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium in 2017. My guy Tyson Fury, of course, created one of the great moments in 2015 when he dethroned Wladimir on a famous night in Dusseldorf. It set the wheels in motion for the era we are now seeing the end of. I had always thought Tyson Fury had the right skills to defeat
“Heavyweights know they can earn if they are successful in boxing, and the momentum has grown. And as we know, success does breed success.”
FW: I think we’ve benefited, and it is pretty well-documented now, from our amateur system, our Olympic success and from not having a lot of our big guys going into American football and basketball, which is largely what has happened in the U.S., in my view. Our heavyweights are too big for football (soccer), and most of our boxers haven’t gone into rugby union. Heavyweights know they can earn if they are successful in boxing, and the momentum has grown. And as we know, success does breed success. We now have a long list of British heavyweights, plus Joseph Parker and Agit Kabayel, promoted by us over here. The Ring: Tyson Fury is still going. Do you expect him to have an active year in 2026? Will we see Fury against Anthony Joshua? FW: It will come down to the money and what is available. We talk, but Tyson
Warren took the popular Frank Bruno to a WBC heavyweight crown.
we went to press, it was announced that Fury-Joshua is in the works.]
The Ring: So you live and work through the Ali era, then the Holmes era before going on to Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Frank Bruno, Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe. How do those first two eras compare in your view – the Ali/Joe Frazier/George Foreman era and the Holmes era? FW: Well, in that first era you mention, they were all involved in 15-round fights. And they all fought each other. A couple of fights got missed over the years which should have happened – Foreman-Holmes, and Lewis-Bowe in the second era you mention – but they were both great eras in my estimation. The heavyweight division always has intrigue. Even the Klitschko brothers enjoyed success and made a period of their own. They didn’t really click in America, but they did big business in Germany, and they worked out that over there they had a market and could generate as much money on the gate in
Wladimir, and for me it was not a shock. I’d always said publicly that Tyson would beat him. But what I would add is that going back to the Ali-Frazier-Foreman era, the British heavyweights weren’t bloody good enough over the years at that point. We had the likes of Cooper. We had Brian London. Not compared to now. I mean, look at the Brits at the moment. The Ring: So we come to the last 10 years with the rise of Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, and obviously Tyson broke the mold 10 years ago by beating Klitschko. And it really has been an incredible, if we can say this, an incredible decade for heavyweight boxing from Britain. What do you put it down to? Do you think Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury have inspired a young generation of heavyweights to come through?
The Ring: Will Fury and Joshua have regrets if they don’t fight? Will the era seem incomplete? FW: That is a question for them. Maybe investment from Saudi Arabia can get it over the line as well. Look at what has happened over the last two years, with the premium being paid by His Excellency and the Saudi Arabians in a real push to make the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia a destination. They’re very successful in what they’re doing, not just in boxing but in sports and entertainment, and in the coming years, they have the World Cup and so forth. They can afford to do this. Imagine if we were getting a huge budget off UK Tourism to do the same. We could compete at that level, but we can’t. So at the moment, the biggest names are expecting major paydays, and we have to meet those demands. As I said, you
was busy in 2025 with Netflix and other projects. If the right money is there, I suspect we will see the Joshua fight. Whoever Tyson fights will be a big fight. For one thing, though, we must remember that you can’t make someone fight. Tyson’s wife, Paris, and his dad, John, don’t want him to fight. It will come down to the finances and the timing. We all hope they fight, but this has happened before. We never got to see Lennox Lewis against Riddick Bowe. And Mike Tyson against Lennox arguably came 10 years too late. I’m sure they will do it. I think we’ll see Tyson back in 2026. And if it does happen, it would fill out Wembley or any other big stadium four times in a heartbeat. [Editor’s note: Shortly before
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