Bob Arum Open To Working With Dana White To Make Fury-Ngannou Fight

Bob Arum and Dana White haven’t seen eye-to-eye in their careers but the Top Rank promoter is open to working with the UFC boss.

Recently, UFC heavyweight champion, Francis Ngannou and Tyson Fury have talked about boxing one another. Ngannou also only has one fight left on his deal so could leave in free agency to make it happen but according to Arum, he’s open to co-promoting the fight with White.

“The truth is I’ve never ever met Dana White,” Arum said (via BoxingScene). “I’ve never talked to him. I’ve never had any interaction with him. He said a lot of bad things about me. I’ve said a lot of bad things about UFC, I believe, so it is what it is. But I would think if there’s a big event, particularly one that we can put on at Allegiant’s Stadium (in Las Vegas) I think White would be right there. Wouldn’t bother me working on a big fight.”

Whether or not White would work with Arum, on the other hand, is uncertain. White has been vocal about how much he dislikes the boxing promoter but Arum says he doesn’t understand where that comes from.

“There is [animosity] but I don’t know where it’s coming from, because I don’t even know the guy,” Arum said. “I never ever, ever even said hello to him or had a conversation with him or anything like that. I don’t know the guy. Why he’s taking a dislike to me – maybe it’s what he’s read – I don’t know. But it’s obvious there’s animosity there. For me on my part there’s no animosity.”

Ultimately, Bob Arum is hoping Dana White can put his differences behind and make the fight. He believes Francis Ngannou vs. Tyson Fury would be a massive fight and even though Fury said he would retire after his bout against Dillian Whyte he said he’d still take the Ngannou fight.

“I think absolutely we’d want that to happen,” Arum said. “Yeah, why not? That would be a great thing to happen. I think the MMA guy has an ACL that has been operated on. So he’ll be ready next year. That fight will do absolute tremendous business. If he has a contact still with UFC – which I don’t know if does or doesn’t – to do it in conjunction with Dana White would add to the drama and momentum for that fight. It would do record numbers. I’m sure if that fight came to fruition and if the UFC was still somehow contractually involved…we’d have to talk. I’m sure we would talk.”

Do you think we will see Francis Ngannou vs. Tyson Fury?