April 2, 2021 • 50 mins
It's a match for the ages: Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury, boxing heavyweight champions in their own right, will soon vie for the title of the world's undisputed boxing champion. Irish native and current Dubai resident Daniel Kinahan has a life-long love of boxing -- and, according to Irish authorities, he is the heir to a criminal empire stretching from Dublin to Africa, South America, Southeast Asia and beyond. Recently, Fury set off a firestorm of speculation when he thanked Kinahan for brokering the fight. In today's episode, Ben and Matt dive into the world of Irish organized crime, the sport, science and art of boxing, all to ask: Is there Something They Don't Want You To Know?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Brading. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt Noel is on an adventure today
they called me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul, mission controlled decand most importantly, you
are you. You are here that makes this stuff they
don't want you to know, Uh, Matt. Today's episode is
a follow up on an earlier Listener Mail segment for
(00:49):
um A few weeks ago, a minute, years ago? What day?
What year is it? Who knows? I have no idea
what's happening where we are? When it is, it's all good.
We talked about this previously. Yeah, I went out. I
went outside yesterday and actually had to go somewhere, and
I felt just like Robin Williams and Jamanji, you know
(01:11):
when he burst out and he's here suit he was
always he was. It was he was very much her
suit and hilarious man. Uh So, in this Listener Male segment,
you and I learned about an enormous ongoing controversy concerning
the sport and science of boxing and a person named
(01:36):
Daniel Kinahan. Daniel Kinahan is an Irishman who currently lives
in Dubai. He is a he wants to be a
boxing promoter, and he's got a lot of influence in
the world of boxing a multiple levels. The world of
what could be described as combat sports, I think would
be more accurate. He is also widely I want to
(01:58):
be careful how I say this, he is wide you
suspected to be the head of an international crime ring
sort of like a maybe not quite on the level
of Pablo Escobar, you know, who pretty much controlled the
country at one point. But it is like an alternate
reality version of like what would happen if Pablo Escobar
(02:20):
got into boxing in a big way? In today's episode,
we're taking a closer look at this story as well.
Was the darker side of boxing overall? And yes, folks,
we we know what you're thinking. Wait, boxing two guys
beating the out of each other in a way that
can lead to permanent injury? What could be more wholesome
(02:41):
than that? What do you mean? Dark side? Guys? How
could there be anything wrong with that sport? Dude? That is.
That's a whole episode two talking about the lasting effects
of the sport of boxing in particular, all combat sports,
but box in particular due to the nature of the
(03:01):
gloves and the trauma that happens to the head constantly.
American football as well. I think it was, Um, did
you work on that video with us about concussions? I did.
I made that video. Yeah, you made that video. Okay, yeah,
I think what you made that video and I was
just sort of there. I think you wrote a lot
(03:24):
of the stuff that Jason Jason Hooke, who formerly was
head of content here or head of content at Stuff Media. Yeah,
he does the voiceover. I can't. We don't even remember
all this stuff we've done anymore. No, No, but it's
it's a serious thing like concussions alone, but there's all
kinds of other damage that can be done with it.
So there's already like a serious danger to it for
(03:48):
anyone participating, but it also appears like there's a serious
danger to people on the periphery and people who are
running some of some of the show here, and before
we really dive in, uh, we want to make it
clear that we personally understand that there is an art
(04:10):
to this pursuit. There is a science. This is not
This is not the episode where Matt and Ben just
dunk on boxing and the sport itself. We're actually I think, um,
I enjoy watching it and trained just a little bit
with it back in the day. But Matt, you you
out now love boxing, right. Boxing has a very special
(04:31):
place in my heart because my father and I used
to watch it together. We had Showtime and there was
you know, Showtime always would have special fights, like regular
fights that would come on. We would also, you know,
back in the late nineties when we were hanging out
a lot together, we would watch like Evander Holyfield go
up against somebody, would watch the Tyson fight. Um. So yeah,
(04:53):
there's a special place in my heart for it. And
I I I did a lot of like you know,
karate and stuff when I was a kid, So I
was really into the like the strikes, the actual strikes
and what does it look like and how do you
avoid and how do you evade? And um, yeah, I'm
very much into the science of it. And actually, Ben,
you and I have discussed before this is a little
(05:14):
inside baseball. We have discussed going into some M M
A style training right before the quarantine occurred. Um, still
very much on no Cropmagad though, Well, I mean, yeah,
we can go, we can skip the crowd, Magad. But
I'm definitely down to do whatever training you're into. Ben
And uh So if you're a gym out there in
Atlanta and you're interested, hey, we we want in if
(05:37):
it's safe. Same um and and the reason I should
be clear, Matt, I'm not saying categorically no Cropmagod. I
just think we should work our way up to it.
I'm down, throw me in the deep end. Let's do it.
Let's do it. Yeah and uh and and shout out
to you for having showtime as a kid. Fancy you
know what I mean? Yeah, baby, we had showtime. I
(06:00):
thought as a child, I thought that was for like
chics and billionaires showtime. Shoot. I don't even go into
skin Amax because we had that too. I learned a
lot from pay for TV stuff. Has this has the
I don't know whether there's a statute of limitations here,
so Paul take this out please if I am skirting
(06:22):
legal lines. But I can't be the only person who
found how to found out how to make those cable
the scramblers and black boxes, right, that was a whole
new the whole new era for me. I don't know
what you're talking about, Ben, all right, I know what
we're supposed to be talking about. That's boxing, that's specifically
(06:45):
this controversy. So here are the facts right now as
we record, there is a fight brewing, two fights in fact.
Uh the date for these fights remains unannounced, as as
the venue, but the insiders and those in the know
believe it may it may well end up being a
(07:07):
fight held in the Middle East. There are two boxers,
Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury, who are doubtlessly going to
be familiar to boxing fans in the audience today. Both
of these men are straight up champions in their own right.
They're legit us. And so in this series of two bouts,
the winner will become the first undisputed heavyweight champion in
(07:32):
twenty years basically. Yeah, And and and that just has to
do with all of the various organizations like deciding that
this is the one person we are going to crown
this one person, because there are numerous organizations that deal
with boxing where you know you can you can win
a belt essentially for one organization. Another person can win
a heavyweight champion belt on another organization. But this is
(07:55):
like the one they unified. Yeah, exactly. There's kind of
a think of it like a pyramid shape of different organizations, right,
and you fight, you literally fight your way up to
the top. So now we are at the peak of
the pyramid. Were at the capstone, and this is uh,
this is a huge deal, especially for our friends across
(08:16):
the pond on the other side of the Atlantic. Both
of these fighters are from England and that is why
a lot of fans, a lot of pundit's enthusiasts of
the sports are calling it the biggest fight in British
boxing history. And it is two fights, correct, I believe
it's it's like they will fight once, maybe one of
them wins, they get to fight again just in case,
(08:39):
or you know, just to settle the score at least
attempt to. And that's the one. The second one is,
like I mean, the first one is a huge draw,
tons of money involved. The second one will probably be
even bigger. Oh yeah, oh for sure. No matter what
the outcome of the first one is, uh, the world
will be watching the second bout. Just to give you
(09:00):
a sense of their championships uh, Anthony Joshua is the
current h W B A, I B F w O
and I B O champion. Tyson Fury is the w
C and the ring champion. And our story today really
starts with Tyson, I would say, with Tyson Fury. Oh yeah,
(09:23):
and let's talk about him. He's fascinating character, really really
fascinating character. His we talked about on that previous episode,
just watching his rise to fame and to the championship
matches and everything. He's really interesting person. But in June
of this guy, Tyson Fury, he went on Instagram, I believe,
(09:43):
and he publicly thanked a specific person, a man named
Daniel Kinahan and one we mentioned at the top, the
Pablo Escobar allegedly Pablo Escobar style figure, thanked him for
his help and influence in organizing this huge of fights.
And this simple call out to a name has led
(10:05):
to a lot of strange things, a lot of revelations
really about perhaps this person's involvement in the sport. Yeah,
exactly so A side note, quick correction which I thought
was hilarious and a little bit disorienting for all of us.
In that Listener Male segment, we talk about Tyson Furies Moniker, right,
(10:30):
and as kind of like public persona that people have
of him. Uh, he has been called the Gypsy King.
That's that's the name that they've used, and of course
that's a problematic term, but that's what people call him.
And that led us to conjecture whether or not he
was possible inspiration for Brad Pitt's character in the amazing
(10:54):
film Snatch, which still holds up. Uh. And so Brad,
I owe you a personal apology because I said something like, look,
he's an amazing actor. That is true. It had to
come from somewhere, though, so could it have been Tyson Fury? Well,
that is probably not true unless Fury is even more
badass than we have ever imagined, because he was twelve
(11:18):
years old when Snatch came out and other distressing news,
the disorienting part. Snatch is about twenty one years old
now or will be this year, and it remains amazing.
It is still one of my favorite movies. It's so good.
So but but honestly, if you're gonna watch Snatch, watch
(11:40):
Lockstock first, because it's just as good. If not, I
don't know, if not better, you have to. They've always
been a combo meal to me, you know what I mean? Yeah, sure, absolutely,
you got you gotta you gotta see the guy Richie universe.
But yes, so that that's a quick correction on our part.
(12:00):
As we said, time has been a little funding for
us recently. But anyhow, so what's the big deal boxers?
I would say world famous athletes in general have a
ton of friends, They have entourages, they know a great
many people. Well, Kenahan, you see, is no ordinary boxing promoter.
(12:26):
He we want to say at the beginning, he has
no convictions at all. As a he has a squeaky
clean record. If his record were if his criminal record
were a kitchen floor, you could eat off of it.
There is nothing. However, he is wanted for questioning in
three different places in Europe uh and in ten an
(12:48):
Irish High Court claimed that he is, in addition to
being a fan of boxing, a senior figure in quote
organized crime on a global scale. Uh So furious public
shout out there on social media, which would seem to
be like a kind of ephemeral thing, you know what
it means to the post with your friends. This led
(13:09):
to a lot of controversy and outrage in the Irish press.
And in the Irish government, Yeah, it certainly did, and
that that group there is the Kinahan Cartel, at least
that's how it's referred to by the Guardia and a
couple other international crime fighting organizations. And again it's got
(13:31):
a long history and we can, we can, we're gonna
talk about it here in a moment, but you're right
that that quick little shout out it just had some
had some effects. The government in Ireland expressed a lot
of well what's called outrage in many of the publications
of the papers that you'll read they're coming out of Ireland.
(13:51):
They call it outrage over Kinhan's role as Furies advisor,
you know, saying things like again, it's like just being
publicly outraged, right, like, ah, we can't believe. This is
absolutely unacceptable, this is tragic. And they're warning that the
reputation to you know, boxing, this thing that we hold
so dear in clubs around the country and around the world, Um,
(14:14):
they're gonna be sullied. The reputations are gonna be sullied
by this association with a guy who has been known
to engage in quote, activities which are completely and utterly
unacceptable and and it's a tough thing, like morally to
to talk about something like this, and it's a whole
discussion you can get into. Is boxing as a sport moral,
(14:36):
you know, is there a morality there are we talking about?
Are we getting into the olden days of gladiators? Is
that it's often compared to that when you're you're you know,
when philosophical discussions occur around that sport, in any other
combat sport. But um, the activities which are completely and
(14:57):
utterly unacceptable are terrible things. Murders and drug running and
gun smuggling and all kinds of activities. So it's it's
both weird to think of, you know, a country being
outraged that this kind of person is involved with a
sport that has an underbelly of a black market in betting.
(15:19):
But it is true that it is outrageous that those
things are occurring and somebody could be involved. It's a
good point. It's a good point. There's a lot of
money on the line as well, which, as we will see,
fundamentally alters the equation. You're absolutely right. It's no secret
that boxing has had its share of unsavory characters and
(15:42):
corruption and real life conspiracies. In the form of financial
shenanigans and fixed a bouts a plenty. But so again,
what's the big deal about Kinahan? After all? Let us
stuff forget here. In the United States, boxing promoter Don
King once literally stomped a man to death, and it
(16:03):
was his employee. By the way he stopped, he killed
someone that worked for him by stepping on them. And
that did not hurt Mike Tyson's career one bit, you
know what I mean. That didn't hurt other people's careers,
and and Don King went on to continue working. But Kinahan,
(16:24):
as we will come to find, is a bit of
a different case. We'll tell you why after a word
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rot I fixed my wallet with fix a fight, and
you can't too. Here's where it gets crazy. All right,
let's just ask is Daniel Kinahan and Irish Escobar. Well
to answer that question, Ben, we have to go all
the way back to nineteen seventy seven. Win Big Dan
(18:40):
as he's sometimes called, was born. He's the son of
a man named Christie Kinahan, who is arguably the most
interesting person in this story. And if you, if you want,
you can really research that guy. Fascinating story. Christie Kinahan,
that's his father, Dan or Daniel currently resides in the
United did Arab Emirates as far as anyone can guess, Dubai,
(19:03):
the city there that we've discussed before, and this thing
called it's it's always referred to as the c A B.
Kind of like the c I A I guess in
a way, but not really more like the FBI. It's
Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau. They claim that Daniel Kinahan controls
and manages this thing that they referred to as the
Kinahan Organized Crime Group. That sounds very official. The media
(19:26):
has dubbed it the Kinahan Cartel what we've mentioned earlier
in this episode, and this cartel or this group, they
believed to have been founded by the father of Daniel Kinahan,
Christie Kinahan, also known as the Dapper down christ Is
because of his pensiant for Panama hats in cool suits.
(19:48):
So the authorities in Ireland believe that this Kinahan family,
this organization actively smuggles firearms and drugs into Ireland, the
United Kingdom and the most of Europe. It is true
that Christie Kinahan has in the past been convicted of
of crimes related to this these sorts of pursuits, but
(20:11):
if you ask the authorities, that didn't stop him from
continuing this career. They believe the Kinahan cartel is huge,
with connections ranging as far afield as the Middle East
where Daniel Kinahan is now, to Asia and all the
way to South America. Yeah, we're talking Russian involvement, all
(20:32):
kinds of countries across the globe, kind of a United
Nations of crime. The Irish government believes that Daniel Kinahan
essentially inherited the family banana stand you know, whatever reference
you want to make. Uh, he himself has successful, He's
(20:54):
in his early forties. He has successfully avoided being a
murdered by rival organist nations which definitely attempted to kill
him uh one time famously attempted to kill him publicly
publicly UH. And he has also avoided being thrown in jail.
But despite this, his name is indelibly attached to the
(21:16):
most infamous gang feud in modern Irish history. It's like
what you if you are in Ireland. You you wake
up in Dublin, you read the morning paper, you see
the name Kinahan. This is the first thing you're going
to think about. That's right. It's a drug feud. It's
called the Hutch Kinahan feud. That's at least how it's
referred to. And it's a conflict that is the Kinahan
(21:40):
organized crime group or the cartel versus this thing called
the Hutch gang. And there's a person named Jerry Hutch G. E.
R R. Y. Hutch who in particular is supposed to
be the one kind of running the show in the
Hutch family. And there's again there's a large organization there.
It's not some you know, small time thing. And there
(22:02):
are many many shootings, multiple shootings that have occurred in
Dublin and Spain that are very high profile. There was
a death toll so far at least I think the
count right now is around twenty or more, but at
least eighteen to twenty victims deaths that have occurred because
of this feud, and there's something like sixty arrests I think.
(22:25):
And and honestly, it's weird because a lot of how
this has been playing out ends up in what they
would consider the tabloids in Ireland and other parts of
the United Kingdom, and it's hard to tell what's fully
occurring in the background. Maybe that isn't being written about
in the papers, right, Yeah, So the Irish reporting, the
(22:47):
Irish reporting will stays on this and the recent events
have renewed interest in the feud. I would say Irish
authorities never stopped thinking about this. And you make a
really good point about what we would consider tabloid papers
in the UK reporting on on these events, because you
know what's got the sensationalist stuff that that is fantastic
(23:12):
for readership right, for ads and getting getting attention there,
But how how accurate are they being versus how speculative
or sensational would be a better word. Yeah, And I
don't mean to throw any of those publications under the bus.
I would just say from our end here in the States,
it's difficult to maybe parse sometimes what's you know, like,
(23:33):
what's coming out of the publication of Belfast versus what's
coming out of a thing that is sometimes considered a tabloid. Yeah, exactly.
And so the feud that began in murder of Gary
Hutch was Jerry Hudge's nephew continues today. The most infamous
of these events is probably the Regency Hotel shooting of sixteen,
(24:00):
when people who are trying to assassinate Daniel Kinahan ended
up fatally shooting an associate of the cartel named David Burne. Uh.
This this is like cinematic. It's a movie level altercation.
People are dressed as law enforcement. One guy dresses as
(24:20):
a woman. Uh to other people, I think gets shot,
but burn is the is the only fatality. And this
gets a lot of coverage in the news because it's
such a crazy story. And Matt, I love the point
you made. We said, Okay, these numbers might be a
little bit tricky because we don't we don't know how
much stuff went on that never made it to the
(24:44):
to the media right or never made it to the authorities,
and just in this incident, and we did talk about
it before, and then you're doing a great job describing
it there. It's just important to know that it's taking
place at a way in for a boxing match. That's
when this goes down. They're in a hotel. You can
see video that's occurring, you know, of the official the
(25:07):
fighters are up there, some of them, you know, they've
got their shirts off there like posing for the pictures.
And then some sounds start occurring out in the lobby
of the hotel. People are running for their for their lives. Um,
there's a harrying video you can see where there's a
child at one point rushing out of one of these
back entrances, just saying, Dad, what was that about? Dad?
(25:28):
What was that? Like? Crying? It's it's it's awful to
actually watch some of it. And you're right, that was
the clash of the clans, which was well, we'll get
into we'll get into why this event in particular was
a blow to Kinahan's boxing career, which I think it's
fair to call the boxing career. So obviously, all of
(25:49):
this context, all of this background, it is no surprise
that when members of the Irish public read the name
Kinahan and the news, they're way more likely to think
of gangland murders that and they are of boxing matches.
At this point, they'll probably think of boxing too, but
it'll be a the second thing they think of Uh Kinahan.
(26:11):
It seemed set for a number of years to reinvent
his image. Think of don't think of me as associated
with crime, think of me as associated with boxing. I
wouldn't be a big player in the world of boxing,
and he's been successful in that regard, especially in the
Middle East. Just last year and he was appointed as
a special advisor for k h K Sports Arre in Bahrain,
(26:35):
and in May of last year he finally spoke to
the public. He should his first public statement on anything
since since the events at the Regency Hotel during the
clash of the Plans. He said, it is an honor
for me to work with His Highness Chik Khalid bin
(26:55):
Hammad al Khalifa, Mr. Mohammed Shalid and the entire team
at k h K Sports. K h K Sports has
made an impressive mark on the world of combat sports
and has fantastic ambitions to grow into a global powerhouse.
I look forward to working with the team to realize
these dreams and further build brain combat sports into a
(27:16):
globally recognized presence. It seems pretty legit, spiffy. Yeah, I
mean it's without that context. This is a pretty innocuous,
polished statement. It sounds exactly like what you're supposed to
say when you get a pretty prestigious job like this,
you're an advisor to someone who is legally called His Highness.
(27:40):
That's wild, you know what I mean? That is the
upper echelond right there. But they're opposing opinions about this
about like, so, Canon's never been convicted, So could you
even say he's quote unquote turning over a new leaf?
Could you say that this is not legitimate? Somehow? There
(28:00):
are two really divided camps about about this guy. One
group absolutely supports him, including boxers themselves. Reporters have asked
plenty of boxers about Kinahan, and they get these positive answers,
with people saying things like, you know, he's a friend
of mine, everybody trust him, everybody respects him, and also
add he's been unfairly treated. The press, they say, is
(28:23):
out to get him. Uh, But people also praise his
connections and you know, in his defense, this is not
something that suddenly happened, didn't come out of the blue.
Daniel Kinahan has been uh into boxing for years and
years and years. In two thousand twelve, he's set up
a company that was at the time called MGM Boxing.
(28:46):
They're the they're the group that was running the way
in at the Regency in twenty six for their event,
the Clash of the Clans, which I think is a
weird historical coincidence, right that there would be a clan
war at the Clash of the Clans. There are at
least of that was the flashpoint. Yeah, that's interesting. Um.
(29:07):
And and that brand MGM Boxing, and you know, all
of the gyms associated with it, and the you know,
the promotions. It changed names and what is probably it
was definitely a pr move. It was rebranded as m
t K Global, which that empty case stands for Mac
the Knife, by the way, and they cut ties with
(29:28):
its founder, Daniel Daniel Kay. At least officially, they cut
ties with the founder. Publicly they did that. And this
is all an attempt to get rid of the stigma
or to try and avoid the stigma that came with
that clash of the clans incident and and and ensuing
gang war. Yeah, exactly. The issue is that that's that
(29:49):
attempt to cut ties didn't work as well as they
had hoped, and the stigma with M t K and
organized crime still still remains. And now let's go to
the other group, the people who think this guy is
definitely like a drug lord and a crime lord. Irish authorities,
(30:12):
a huge swath of the Irish media are not buying
this boxing promotion narrative. They argue that despite not ever
being convicted of anything, Kinahan took control of the cartel
from his father about five or six years ago because
the Dapper Dawn wanted to retire, and that now Daniel
(30:34):
Kinahan himself directly controls plays a leading role in a
cartel that's doing billions of euros of dollars worth of
business across three continents and all the while racking up
an enormous body count in the process, which to me
means that if any of this is true, you can
(30:54):
say one thing about kinahana boxing. He's not in it
for the money, maybe right, Like, he doesn't seem like
a guy is really sweating the water. Bill. Yeah, it's
weird because when you're that close to boxing. We talked
about this before, there's so much money to be made
on on the level with a boxing match, right with
(31:15):
with betting that is sanctioned, with the actual winnings, with
all the money you make at a big event in
person or on pay per view. There's a ton of
money to be made up here, and there's so much
more money to be made down here in in the
the off books betting, or just in the darker side
of the betting world. So maybe in it for the
(31:36):
money to like run part of this business, but he
doesn't need it personally, right, that's the whole point. Yeah,
I think I got myself into a weird spot cognitively
because ordinarily I like it. I like knowing when someone
is not in in something purely for financial gain because
that means on some level they care about it in
(31:56):
a way they cannot be quantified. And typically was that
that kind of motivation results in better work, more more passionate.
But yeah, you're absolutely right, You are absolutely right. And
authorities believed that Kenahan's ability to duck the law so
well and so often comes down to what they describe
(32:17):
as meticulous planning. And keeping an absolute minimum number of
people in the know about business ventures. Dude. And and
we didn't even really get into Christie's background too much.
Like I said, fascinating read. I think he learned from
the best. That's why if Daniel is in fact this
mob leader, he's good at it because he learned from
(32:40):
his father. His father went to prison for quite a
while and ended up earning two degrees while he was
in prison. He even gave up the opportunity to leave
prison early because he wanted to finish a degree while
he was in there. He allegedly owns hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of properties in many places, allegedly. I
(33:03):
haven't actually seen property deeds or anything like that, but um,
you know, we're talking like five million dollar home in
one place, hundred sixty million dollar home in another place,
like multiple properties, so many properties in Ireland. That guy,
the father, was very good at what he was doing,
and apparently very good at hiding money and travel and
(33:24):
keeping operations at very secret. And he is alive right
now as we record. He is happily retired in Spain.
The father that is, uh, yes, yeah, there is. There
is a strong indication that I like the way you
put it, that he learned from the best, and people
(33:46):
believe they've cracked the code. Detective Superintendent David Gallagher from
the National Drugs and Organized Crime Bureau of Ireland walked
through the hierarchy of the gang of the organization in
court and he said, they have this structure. It's very clever.
It's kind of thing you know, you and I would do. Probably.
(34:09):
They have sub cells that everybody's organized into these cells,
and they're structured such that if an operation goes wrong
or if someone tries to turn into an informant, which
Irish media calls turning tout. By the way, I thought
that was so cool, if someone does try to snitch,
(34:31):
they will literally not have the information they need because
they'll only know about their part of the of the web, right,
and they're part of the process well, and it's structures
that if somebody from that sub cell is seeking information,
specific information from higher up, it becomes an incredibly suspicious thing.
(34:52):
And you, yeah, it's a way to root out people
who may have turned out. Yes, it's true. It works
both way. So authorities also maintain that, yes, the organization's
move towards the world of boxing. Maybe real, legitimate actually
has happened, but that doesn't mean that it's also, you know,
(35:15):
not still a crime ring. That's that's basically their argument.
They're making that face any court that matches made. So
there you have it. This story has some updates that
will get to at the end of the show, but
first let's take a break for word from our sponsor,
and then we'll come back to talk just a little
(35:37):
bit about boxing, your crime in general, where there is
a great deal of stuff they don't want you to know.
All right, we are back and we are jumping into
boxing and crime in general, a little bit of corruption,
a little side of corruption. Uh. There's an outlet called
(35:58):
Journal dot i E. It's actually really great. You should
check it out if you can. There's a lot of
cool reporting in the in there about boxing, just as
the sport and this topic in general. Here's a quote
from them. The sport and business of boxing has been
infiltrated by criminal elements for the best part of two decades.
(36:19):
The potential to earn large amounts of cash and to
rub shoulders with the rich and famous at ringsides around
the world proved alluring for Ireland's top criminals. Now this
makes sense if you've ever I'm gonna take it to
m A instead of boxing. But it's it's it's not
the same thing, right from a sport, from a science perspective,
(36:41):
from the sport itself, but in the events, boxing and
m m A are very very very similar. If you
look at something the UFC puts on and a big
pay per view show, let's say something that happened not
long ago. Connor McGregor is fighting, and you know before
of course warantine and all of the coronavirus implementations where
(37:03):
there's nobody in the audience. When you look at one
of these big matches down at the front right near
the ring, there are going to be celebrities and powerful individuals,
many times faceless powerful individuals those who don't show up
in the newspaper all the time, don't You don't recognize
them when their face flashes across. But that person in
(37:24):
that audience may be extremely powerful. Yeah. Absolutely, you get
access and and access is a extremely valuable thing. So
to react to that claim, what do we say, Well, yes,
the conspiracy is real. I mean for numerous reasons, Boxing
(37:45):
as his sport, has a long association with crime, and
it also has just the way it's structured, it has
a great potential to be exploited and corrupted. I mean,
think about it, right, I still I always think when
we spoke with Brian Tooey m boxing in particular, you
have a very small set of what we could think
(38:07):
of as players, primarily the two boxers, but we also
have just a few officials, right, And you know, a
fight can be one based on a decision by those
those officials. So if any one of those people is
convinced to take a dive, or if they're bribed to
go one way or another with a decision, then it
(38:29):
can be extraordinarily difficult to prove the fight was fixed,
Which means if you want to get into that business,
you have two cool sources of revenue. Now you can
generate a ton of money through gambling and rigged outcomes.
You can also launder a ton of dirty money because
it's gambling. So what's not to love? Like? It makes
(38:51):
sense to me? Um, I've never fixed the boxing match,
but I can see the appeal for certain certain people
in the industry, and the weird part of out it
is for fans of boxing and boxers themselves. You're probably
much better off now than you were in the nineteen
fifties when boxing was crazy dirty, Like the US Senate
(39:12):
investigated boxing. Uh, there's a there's a cool site we
found called the Ring that that has a neat anecdote
that I really think puts this in perspective. Sure. Here
it is the very era that many recall as one
of the sports true golden ages, was so brazenly filthy
and infested with gangsters and other ne'er dwells that the
(39:36):
January thirty one, nineteen fifty five issue of Sports Illustrated
concluded an investigative piece on the state of the sports
with the sentence, boxing today is a national scandal. Boxing today,
it's national scandal back in the nineteen fifties. So we
often note the relationship between large amounts of money and
(39:58):
corruption in multiple industries, right, and everything from investment banking
to reality TV the stock marketed course. Uh, even without
considering the Kinahan case specifically, it turns out boxing is
no different. And that is a crying shame because boxers,
(40:18):
you know, the actual people, not the industry surrounding them,
are working their keysters off to be the best athletes
they can possibly be. And as we said earlier, you know,
there's there's a pretty compelling argument to make that boxing
is as much as science in some sense as it
is a sport. But you could say that there are
two fights for every bout. One is the fight between
(40:41):
the people in the ring, and the other is the fight,
the ongoing fight that legitimate athletes and fans of the
sport have against incredibly powerful forces that seek to poison
the game they love. As we draw to a close here,
you know, Matt, obviously we have to point out at
this juncture there has been no accusation that Kinahan himself
(41:05):
is attempting to rig this the world's most important upcoming
boxing match, and in fact, Ireland is so scandalized by
his involvement that no one's really bothered to float the
possibility of him fixing a match or asked how likely
that might be. Given statements of industry professionals and athletes,
(41:26):
it seems like people in that industry, a lot of
people overwhelmingly trust him. So there there we find kind
of the morality that we were talking about at the top.
You know, it's I get I get the sense. I
don't know if you feel this way. But I get
the sense that um, people believe Kinahan, regardless of what
(41:48):
else he does, probably holds the sport in very high
esteem and would react pretty adversely. I think it would
be offended if people said, hey, you're gonna fix this match, right,
and he doesn't. Regardless what you believe, he doesn't seem
like the kind of person you would want to offend now,
just because of his power in the sport, right, It
(42:10):
doesn't matter if he's associated with any organized crime, and
he his word means something generally. And again here's another quote,
just when talking about his connections within the sport itself,
outside of anything else here, it is um. This is
a source that said it's harder to find a boxer
(42:30):
not linked to Kinahan than one who is. He dominates
the boxing world and everyone knows it. Daniel Kinahan himself,
as well as the organization that he's allegedly involved with,
and the Hutch gang that is the one at odds
with the Kinahan cartel. It is weird to look at
events and the social media feeds of popular boxers and
(42:55):
m m A fighters. It is weird to see these
characters show up in selfies. They show up in behind
the scenes photographs of training. Um, it does feel like
there's a real connection there. Although you know, if you're
not in the guarda Guardia, if you're not in the
FBI or whatever, whoever, whatever organizations are investigating organized crime
(43:19):
groups like that, it's tough to know whether any of
it is real, whether just because they're associated in pictures,
just because their ringside, just because they, you know, own
a gym, some organization owns a gym where important fighters train.
It doesn't necessarily mean that everybody's in on the same game,
but the connections and the associations, it's tough to to miss. Yeah,
(43:42):
well said, Well said. And for a deeper look at
the Kinahan case of do check out the excellent BBC
Panorama documentary we talked about earlier. Uh. They argue that Kinahan,
regardless of his current association's auster present companies, continues to
(44:03):
influence individual boxers and players in the industry on a
personal level. Like he's he is embedded in this um,
in this enterprise in such a way that it's very
difficult to take him out of it, you know. Uh. Also,
recent reports from March argued that kid Ahan might be
(44:25):
branching out the soccer football for of course the rest
of the world through the actions of his former company
m t K. But that's kind of sticky because again,
officially he cut ties and as the outcry over Fury
and Kinahan's association grew, Fury ended up distancing himself from
(44:46):
Kinahan with Kinahan's blessing. By the way, the way it's portrayed,
it's it's got big mafia vibes, the way they the
way they talk about it, you know, But a lot
of that might just be the reporters. That's that's another
part of it. So there we are, folks, the world
of boxing, the world of crime, the saga of Daniel
(45:08):
Kinahan and the Kinahan family. What do you think? Again,
this is a fascinating story for us, but we keep
coming to it back to the fact that, you know,
this guy has never been convicted of anything, you know
what I mean? And do you is it fair to
judge the sudden by the sins of the father. I
I don't know. I don't know if it is, and
(45:30):
I don't think it is. But at the same time,
there are dedicated law enforcement officers, investigators who believe that
this is what's happening. This is the thing, and there
has been a ton of bloodshed associated here um and
lives ruined and destroyed. And you know, that's a tough situation.
But it's really hard too because as a fan of
(45:53):
of combat sports, like I want to I want to
still be able to watch boxing matches in in m
m A fights and stuff, and it depending on how
deep this corruption is, maybe I shouldn't want to do that,
but dang it if I if I don't want to
tune in um dude, since the ever since The Ultimate Fighter, like, like,
(46:14):
I can't get enough of these things. And I don't
know why. I don't know. I don't know. If it's
just some deep thing inside of us as humans that
enjoy that the stakes of having two people like locked
in a cage that have to battle with each other.
Maybe there's just something deep, deeply in our nature about that.
In my nature at least, I don't I don't want it.
(46:36):
I don't want it to go away because it's corrupt.
I don't know. It's a tough one. We'd love to
know what you think about all of that stuff. Agreed, Yeah,
let us know. People who are familiar with the story.
People who are familiar with the sport. We'd like to
hear from you, and we try to make it easy
to find us online. Yeah, that's right. You can find
us on Twitter and Facebook where we are conspiracy Stuff.
On Instagram we are a conspiracy stuff show. If you
(46:59):
want to find us personally, Ben's got Twitter and Instagram going.
I think that's true. Yes, the rumors are true. You
can find me at Ben bolland h s W on Twitter,
uh the longtime listeners? Do you know what hs W means?
And you can also find me on Instagram where I
am named in a burst of creativity at Ben Bolan
(47:22):
bow L. I n how about you, Matt. You know,
sometimes sometimes you tell us about where to bind you
online and then sometimes you don't. I know, I I
this time, I'm not going to What I am going
to say though, is the first time I ever met
the founder of that thing called hs W that you
just mentioned. I was on the set of a video
(47:45):
called How Boxing Works, that's right, and it was the
first time I got to be DP or run run
the camera, essentially be the videographer on on a set
and it was great. We shot with an actual I
think he became a champion when we when we were
shooting with him, this boxer, he had just won some competition. Um,
(48:09):
I can't remember what it was, but he was incredible anyway,
it's a weird, weird, weird thing. First video, are we
becoming sentimental Elder podcast stage? Well, if that's the case,
then hurry up and get to us before we before
we expire, hopefully if natural non boxing related causes. If
(48:33):
you don't care for social media, you can call us directly.
We have a phone number where one eight three three
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(48:54):
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you and our team. Then that's fine. Just throw it
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(49:16):
If you have a story that doesn't fit in three minutes,
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(49:57):
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Brading. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt Noel is on an adventure today
they called me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul, mission controlled decand most importantly, you
are you. You are here that makes this stuff they
don't want you to know, Uh, Matt. Today's episode is
a follow up on an earlier Listener Mail segment for
(00:49):
um A few weeks ago, a minute, years ago? What day?
What year is it? Who knows? I have no idea
what's happening where we are? When it is, it's all good.
We talked about this previously. Yeah, I went out. I
went outside yesterday and actually had to go somewhere, and
I felt just like Robin Williams and Jamanji, you know
(01:11):
when he burst out and he's here suit he was
always he was. It was he was very much her
suit and hilarious man. Uh So, in this Listener Male segment,
you and I learned about an enormous ongoing controversy concerning
the sport and science of boxing and a person named
(01:36):
Daniel Kinahan. Daniel Kinahan is an Irishman who currently lives
in Dubai. He is a he wants to be a
boxing promoter, and he's got a lot of influence in
the world of boxing a multiple levels. The world of
what could be described as combat sports, I think would
be more accurate. He is also widely I want to
(01:58):
be careful how I say this, he is wide you
suspected to be the head of an international crime ring
sort of like a maybe not quite on the level
of Pablo Escobar, you know, who pretty much controlled the
country at one point. But it is like an alternate
reality version of like what would happen if Pablo Escobar
(02:20):
got into boxing in a big way? In today's episode,
we're taking a closer look at this story as well.
Was the darker side of boxing overall? And yes, folks,
we we know what you're thinking. Wait, boxing two guys
beating the out of each other in a way that
can lead to permanent injury? What could be more wholesome
(02:41):
than that? What do you mean? Dark side? Guys? How
could there be anything wrong with that sport? Dude? That is.
That's a whole episode two talking about the lasting effects
of the sport of boxing in particular, all combat sports,
but box in particular due to the nature of the
(03:01):
gloves and the trauma that happens to the head constantly.
American football as well. I think it was, Um, did
you work on that video with us about concussions? I did.
I made that video. Yeah, you made that video. Okay, yeah,
I think what you made that video and I was
just sort of there. I think you wrote a lot
(03:24):
of the stuff that Jason Jason Hooke, who formerly was
head of content here or head of content at Stuff Media. Yeah,
he does the voiceover. I can't. We don't even remember
all this stuff we've done anymore. No, No, but it's
it's a serious thing like concussions alone, but there's all
kinds of other damage that can be done with it.
So there's already like a serious danger to it for
(03:48):
anyone participating, but it also appears like there's a serious
danger to people on the periphery and people who are
running some of some of the show here, and before
we really dive in, uh, we want to make it
clear that we personally understand that there is an art
(04:10):
to this pursuit. There is a science. This is not
This is not the episode where Matt and Ben just
dunk on boxing and the sport itself. We're actually I think, um,
I enjoy watching it and trained just a little bit
with it back in the day. But Matt, you you
out now love boxing, right. Boxing has a very special
(04:31):
place in my heart because my father and I used
to watch it together. We had Showtime and there was
you know, Showtime always would have special fights, like regular
fights that would come on. We would also, you know,
back in the late nineties when we were hanging out
a lot together, we would watch like Evander Holyfield go
up against somebody, would watch the Tyson fight. Um. So yeah,
(04:53):
there's a special place in my heart for it. And
I I I did a lot of like you know,
karate and stuff when I was a kid, So I
was really into the like the strikes, the actual strikes
and what does it look like and how do you
avoid and how do you evade? And um, yeah, I'm
very much into the science of it. And actually, Ben,
you and I have discussed before this is a little
(05:14):
inside baseball. We have discussed going into some M M
A style training right before the quarantine occurred. Um, still
very much on no Cropmagad though, Well, I mean, yeah,
we can go, we can skip the crowd, Magad. But
I'm definitely down to do whatever training you're into. Ben
And uh So if you're a gym out there in
Atlanta and you're interested, hey, we we want in if
(05:37):
it's safe. Same um and and the reason I should
be clear, Matt, I'm not saying categorically no Cropmagod. I
just think we should work our way up to it.
I'm down, throw me in the deep end. Let's do it.
Let's do it. Yeah and uh and and shout out
to you for having showtime as a kid. Fancy you
know what I mean? Yeah, baby, we had showtime. I
(06:00):
thought as a child, I thought that was for like
chics and billionaires showtime. Shoot. I don't even go into
skin Amax because we had that too. I learned a
lot from pay for TV stuff. Has this has the
I don't know whether there's a statute of limitations here,
so Paul take this out please if I am skirting
(06:22):
legal lines. But I can't be the only person who
found how to found out how to make those cable
the scramblers and black boxes, right, that was a whole
new the whole new era for me. I don't know
what you're talking about, Ben, all right, I know what
we're supposed to be talking about. That's boxing, that's specifically
(06:45):
this controversy. So here are the facts right now as
we record, there is a fight brewing, two fights in fact.
Uh the date for these fights remains unannounced, as as
the venue, but the insiders and those in the know
believe it may it may well end up being a
(07:07):
fight held in the Middle East. There are two boxers,
Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury, who are doubtlessly going to
be familiar to boxing fans in the audience today. Both
of these men are straight up champions in their own right.
They're legit us. And so in this series of two bouts,
the winner will become the first undisputed heavyweight champion in
(07:32):
twenty years basically. Yeah, And and and that just has to
do with all of the various organizations like deciding that
this is the one person we are going to crown
this one person, because there are numerous organizations that deal
with boxing where you know you can you can win
a belt essentially for one organization. Another person can win
a heavyweight champion belt on another organization. But this is
(07:55):
like the one they unified. Yeah, exactly. There's kind of
a think of it like a pyramid shape of different organizations, right,
and you fight, you literally fight your way up to
the top. So now we are at the peak of
the pyramid. Were at the capstone, and this is uh,
this is a huge deal, especially for our friends across
(08:16):
the pond on the other side of the Atlantic. Both
of these fighters are from England and that is why
a lot of fans, a lot of pundit's enthusiasts of
the sports are calling it the biggest fight in British
boxing history. And it is two fights, correct, I believe
it's it's like they will fight once, maybe one of
them wins, they get to fight again just in case,
(08:39):
or you know, just to settle the score at least
attempt to. And that's the one. The second one is,
like I mean, the first one is a huge draw,
tons of money involved. The second one will probably be
even bigger. Oh yeah, oh for sure. No matter what
the outcome of the first one is, uh, the world
will be watching the second bout. Just to give you
(09:00):
a sense of their championships uh, Anthony Joshua is the
current h W B A, I B F w O
and I B O champion. Tyson Fury is the w
C and the ring champion. And our story today really
starts with Tyson, I would say, with Tyson Fury. Oh yeah,
(09:23):
and let's talk about him. He's fascinating character, really really
fascinating character. His we talked about on that previous episode,
just watching his rise to fame and to the championship
matches and everything. He's really interesting person. But in June
of this guy, Tyson Fury, he went on Instagram, I believe,
(09:43):
and he publicly thanked a specific person, a man named
Daniel Kinahan and one we mentioned at the top, the
Pablo Escobar allegedly Pablo Escobar style figure, thanked him for
his help and influence in organizing this huge of fights.
And this simple call out to a name has led
(10:05):
to a lot of strange things, a lot of revelations
really about perhaps this person's involvement in the sport. Yeah,
exactly so A side note, quick correction which I thought
was hilarious and a little bit disorienting for all of us.
In that Listener Male segment, we talk about Tyson Furies Moniker, right,
(10:30):
and as kind of like public persona that people have
of him. Uh, he has been called the Gypsy King.
That's that's the name that they've used, and of course
that's a problematic term, but that's what people call him.
And that led us to conjecture whether or not he
was possible inspiration for Brad Pitt's character in the amazing
(10:54):
film Snatch, which still holds up. Uh. And so Brad,
I owe you a personal apology because I said something like, look,
he's an amazing actor. That is true. It had to
come from somewhere, though, so could it have been Tyson Fury? Well,
that is probably not true unless Fury is even more
badass than we have ever imagined, because he was twelve
(11:18):
years old when Snatch came out and other distressing news,
the disorienting part. Snatch is about twenty one years old
now or will be this year, and it remains amazing.
It is still one of my favorite movies. It's so good.
So but but honestly, if you're gonna watch Snatch, watch
(11:40):
Lockstock first, because it's just as good. If not, I
don't know, if not better, you have to. They've always
been a combo meal to me, you know what I mean? Yeah, sure, absolutely,
you got you gotta you gotta see the guy Richie universe.
But yes, so that that's a quick correction on our part.
(12:00):
As we said, time has been a little funding for
us recently. But anyhow, so what's the big deal boxers?
I would say world famous athletes in general have a
ton of friends, They have entourages, they know a great
many people. Well, Kenahan, you see, is no ordinary boxing promoter.
(12:26):
He we want to say at the beginning, he has
no convictions at all. As a he has a squeaky
clean record. If his record were if his criminal record
were a kitchen floor, you could eat off of it.
There is nothing. However, he is wanted for questioning in
three different places in Europe uh and in ten an
(12:48):
Irish High Court claimed that he is, in addition to
being a fan of boxing, a senior figure in quote
organized crime on a global scale. Uh So furious public
shout out there on social media, which would seem to
be like a kind of ephemeral thing, you know what
it means to the post with your friends. This led
(13:09):
to a lot of controversy and outrage in the Irish press.
And in the Irish government, Yeah, it certainly did, and
that that group there is the Kinahan Cartel, at least
that's how it's referred to by the Guardia and a
couple other international crime fighting organizations. And again it's got
(13:31):
a long history and we can, we can, we're gonna
talk about it here in a moment, but you're right
that that quick little shout out it just had some
had some effects. The government in Ireland expressed a lot
of well what's called outrage in many of the publications
of the papers that you'll read they're coming out of Ireland.
(13:51):
They call it outrage over Kinhan's role as Furies advisor,
you know, saying things like again, it's like just being
publicly outraged, right, like, ah, we can't believe. This is
absolutely unacceptable, this is tragic. And they're warning that the
reputation to you know, boxing, this thing that we hold
so dear in clubs around the country and around the world, Um,
(14:14):
they're gonna be sullied. The reputations are gonna be sullied
by this association with a guy who has been known
to engage in quote, activities which are completely and utterly
unacceptable and and it's a tough thing, like morally to
to talk about something like this, and it's a whole
discussion you can get into. Is boxing as a sport moral,
(14:36):
you know, is there a morality there are we talking about?
Are we getting into the olden days of gladiators? Is
that it's often compared to that when you're you're you know,
when philosophical discussions occur around that sport, in any other
combat sport. But um, the activities which are completely and
(14:57):
utterly unacceptable are terrible things. Murders and drug running and
gun smuggling and all kinds of activities. So it's it's
both weird to think of, you know, a country being
outraged that this kind of person is involved with a
sport that has an underbelly of a black market in betting.
(15:19):
But it is true that it is outrageous that those
things are occurring and somebody could be involved. It's a
good point. It's a good point. There's a lot of
money on the line as well, which, as we will see,
fundamentally alters the equation. You're absolutely right. It's no secret
that boxing has had its share of unsavory characters and
(15:42):
corruption and real life conspiracies. In the form of financial
shenanigans and fixed a bouts a plenty. But so again,
what's the big deal about Kinahan? After all? Let us
stuff forget here. In the United States, boxing promoter Don
King once literally stomped a man to death, and it
(16:03):
was his employee. By the way he stopped, he killed
someone that worked for him by stepping on them. And
that did not hurt Mike Tyson's career one bit, you
know what I mean. That didn't hurt other people's careers,
and and Don King went on to continue working. But Kinahan,
(16:24):
as we will come to find, is a bit of
a different case. We'll tell you why after a word
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rot I fixed my wallet with fix a fight, and
you can't too. Here's where it gets crazy. All right,
let's just ask is Daniel Kinahan and Irish Escobar. Well
to answer that question, Ben, we have to go all
the way back to nineteen seventy seven. Win Big Dan
(18:40):
as he's sometimes called, was born. He's the son of
a man named Christie Kinahan, who is arguably the most
interesting person in this story. And if you, if you want,
you can really research that guy. Fascinating story. Christie Kinahan,
that's his father, Dan or Daniel currently resides in the
United did Arab Emirates as far as anyone can guess, Dubai,
(19:03):
the city there that we've discussed before, and this thing
called it's it's always referred to as the c A B.
Kind of like the c I A I guess in
a way, but not really more like the FBI. It's
Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau. They claim that Daniel Kinahan controls
and manages this thing that they referred to as the
Kinahan Organized Crime Group. That sounds very official. The media
(19:26):
has dubbed it the Kinahan Cartel what we've mentioned earlier
in this episode, and this cartel or this group, they
believed to have been founded by the father of Daniel Kinahan,
Christie Kinahan, also known as the Dapper down christ Is
because of his pensiant for Panama hats in cool suits.
(19:48):
So the authorities in Ireland believe that this Kinahan family,
this organization actively smuggles firearms and drugs into Ireland, the
United Kingdom and the most of Europe. It is true
that Christie Kinahan has in the past been convicted of
of crimes related to this these sorts of pursuits, but
(20:11):
if you ask the authorities, that didn't stop him from
continuing this career. They believe the Kinahan cartel is huge,
with connections ranging as far afield as the Middle East
where Daniel Kinahan is now, to Asia and all the
way to South America. Yeah, we're talking Russian involvement, all
(20:32):
kinds of countries across the globe, kind of a United
Nations of crime. The Irish government believes that Daniel Kinahan
essentially inherited the family banana stand you know, whatever reference
you want to make. Uh, he himself has successful, He's
(20:54):
in his early forties. He has successfully avoided being a
murdered by rival organist nations which definitely attempted to kill
him uh one time famously attempted to kill him publicly
publicly UH. And he has also avoided being thrown in jail.
But despite this, his name is indelibly attached to the
(21:16):
most infamous gang feud in modern Irish history. It's like
what you if you are in Ireland. You you wake
up in Dublin, you read the morning paper, you see
the name Kinahan. This is the first thing you're going
to think about. That's right. It's a drug feud. It's
called the Hutch Kinahan feud. That's at least how it's
referred to. And it's a conflict that is the Kinahan
(21:40):
organized crime group or the cartel versus this thing called
the Hutch gang. And there's a person named Jerry Hutch G. E.
R R. Y. Hutch who in particular is supposed to
be the one kind of running the show in the
Hutch family. And there's again there's a large organization there.
It's not some you know, small time thing. And there
(22:02):
are many many shootings, multiple shootings that have occurred in
Dublin and Spain that are very high profile. There was
a death toll so far at least I think the
count right now is around twenty or more, but at
least eighteen to twenty victims deaths that have occurred because
of this feud, and there's something like sixty arrests I think.
(22:25):
And and honestly, it's weird because a lot of how
this has been playing out ends up in what they
would consider the tabloids in Ireland and other parts of
the United Kingdom, and it's hard to tell what's fully
occurring in the background. Maybe that isn't being written about
in the papers, right, Yeah, So the Irish reporting, the
(22:47):
Irish reporting will stays on this and the recent events
have renewed interest in the feud. I would say Irish
authorities never stopped thinking about this. And you make a
really good point about what we would consider tabloid papers
in the UK reporting on on these events, because you
know what's got the sensationalist stuff that that is fantastic
(23:12):
for readership right, for ads and getting getting attention there,
But how how accurate are they being versus how speculative
or sensational would be a better word. Yeah, And I
don't mean to throw any of those publications under the bus.
I would just say from our end here in the States,
it's difficult to maybe parse sometimes what's you know, like,
(23:33):
what's coming out of the publication of Belfast versus what's
coming out of a thing that is sometimes considered a tabloid. Yeah, exactly.
And so the feud that began in murder of Gary
Hutch was Jerry Hudge's nephew continues today. The most infamous
of these events is probably the Regency Hotel shooting of sixteen,
(24:00):
when people who are trying to assassinate Daniel Kinahan ended
up fatally shooting an associate of the cartel named David Burne. Uh.
This this is like cinematic. It's a movie level altercation.
People are dressed as law enforcement. One guy dresses as
(24:20):
a woman. Uh to other people, I think gets shot,
but burn is the is the only fatality. And this
gets a lot of coverage in the news because it's
such a crazy story. And Matt, I love the point
you made. We said, Okay, these numbers might be a
little bit tricky because we don't we don't know how
much stuff went on that never made it to the
(24:44):
to the media right or never made it to the authorities,
and just in this incident, and we did talk about
it before, and then you're doing a great job describing
it there. It's just important to know that it's taking
place at a way in for a boxing match. That's
when this goes down. They're in a hotel. You can
see video that's occurring, you know, of the official the
(25:07):
fighters are up there, some of them, you know, they've
got their shirts off there like posing for the pictures.
And then some sounds start occurring out in the lobby
of the hotel. People are running for their for their lives. Um,
there's a harrying video you can see where there's a
child at one point rushing out of one of these
back entrances, just saying, Dad, what was that about? Dad?
(25:28):
What was that? Like? Crying? It's it's it's awful to
actually watch some of it. And you're right, that was
the clash of the clans, which was well, we'll get
into we'll get into why this event in particular was
a blow to Kinahan's boxing career, which I think it's
fair to call the boxing career. So obviously, all of
(25:49):
this context, all of this background, it is no surprise
that when members of the Irish public read the name
Kinahan and the news, they're way more likely to think
of gangland murders that and they are of boxing matches.
At this point, they'll probably think of boxing too, but
it'll be a the second thing they think of Uh Kinahan.
(26:11):
It seemed set for a number of years to reinvent
his image. Think of don't think of me as associated
with crime, think of me as associated with boxing. I
wouldn't be a big player in the world of boxing,
and he's been successful in that regard, especially in the
Middle East. Just last year and he was appointed as
a special advisor for k h K Sports Arre in Bahrain,
(26:35):
and in May of last year he finally spoke to
the public. He should his first public statement on anything
since since the events at the Regency Hotel during the
clash of the Plans. He said, it is an honor
for me to work with His Highness Chik Khalid bin
(26:55):
Hammad al Khalifa, Mr. Mohammed Shalid and the entire team
at k h K Sports. K h K Sports has
made an impressive mark on the world of combat sports
and has fantastic ambitions to grow into a global powerhouse.
I look forward to working with the team to realize
these dreams and further build brain combat sports into a
(27:16):
globally recognized presence. It seems pretty legit, spiffy. Yeah, I
mean it's without that context. This is a pretty innocuous,
polished statement. It sounds exactly like what you're supposed to
say when you get a pretty prestigious job like this,
you're an advisor to someone who is legally called His Highness.
(27:40):
That's wild, you know what I mean? That is the
upper echelond right there. But they're opposing opinions about this
about like, so, Canon's never been convicted, So could you
even say he's quote unquote turning over a new leaf?
Could you say that this is not legitimate? Somehow? There
(28:00):
are two really divided camps about about this guy. One
group absolutely supports him, including boxers themselves. Reporters have asked
plenty of boxers about Kinahan, and they get these positive answers,
with people saying things like, you know, he's a friend
of mine, everybody trust him, everybody respects him, and also
add he's been unfairly treated. The press, they say, is
(28:23):
out to get him. Uh, But people also praise his
connections and you know, in his defense, this is not
something that suddenly happened, didn't come out of the blue.
Daniel Kinahan has been uh into boxing for years and
years and years. In two thousand twelve, he's set up
a company that was at the time called MGM Boxing.
(28:46):
They're the they're the group that was running the way
in at the Regency in twenty six for their event,
the Clash of the Clans, which I think is a
weird historical coincidence, right that there would be a clan
war at the Clash of the Clans. There are at
least of that was the flashpoint. Yeah, that's interesting. Um.
(29:07):
And and that brand MGM Boxing, and you know, all
of the gyms associated with it, and the you know,
the promotions. It changed names and what is probably it
was definitely a pr move. It was rebranded as m
t K Global, which that empty case stands for Mac
the Knife, by the way, and they cut ties with
(29:28):
its founder, Daniel Daniel Kay. At least officially, they cut
ties with the founder. Publicly they did that. And this
is all an attempt to get rid of the stigma
or to try and avoid the stigma that came with
that clash of the clans incident and and and ensuing
gang war. Yeah, exactly. The issue is that that's that
(29:49):
attempt to cut ties didn't work as well as they
had hoped, and the stigma with M t K and
organized crime still still remains. And now let's go to
the other group, the people who think this guy is
definitely like a drug lord and a crime lord. Irish authorities,
(30:12):
a huge swath of the Irish media are not buying
this boxing promotion narrative. They argue that despite not ever
being convicted of anything, Kinahan took control of the cartel
from his father about five or six years ago because
the Dapper Dawn wanted to retire, and that now Daniel
(30:34):
Kinahan himself directly controls plays a leading role in a
cartel that's doing billions of euros of dollars worth of
business across three continents and all the while racking up
an enormous body count in the process, which to me
means that if any of this is true, you can
(30:54):
say one thing about kinahana boxing. He's not in it
for the money, maybe right, Like, he doesn't seem like
a guy is really sweating the water. Bill. Yeah, it's
weird because when you're that close to boxing. We talked
about this before, there's so much money to be made
on on the level with a boxing match, right with
(31:15):
with betting that is sanctioned, with the actual winnings, with
all the money you make at a big event in
person or on pay per view. There's a ton of
money to be made up here, and there's so much
more money to be made down here in in the
the off books betting, or just in the darker side
of the betting world. So maybe in it for the
(31:36):
money to like run part of this business, but he
doesn't need it personally, right, that's the whole point. Yeah,
I think I got myself into a weird spot cognitively
because ordinarily I like it. I like knowing when someone
is not in in something purely for financial gain because
that means on some level they care about it in
(31:56):
a way they cannot be quantified. And typically was that
that kind of motivation results in better work, more more passionate.
But yeah, you're absolutely right, You are absolutely right. And
authorities believed that Kenahan's ability to duck the law so
well and so often comes down to what they describe
(32:17):
as meticulous planning. And keeping an absolute minimum number of
people in the know about business ventures. Dude. And and
we didn't even really get into Christie's background too much.
Like I said, fascinating read. I think he learned from
the best. That's why if Daniel is in fact this
mob leader, he's good at it because he learned from
(32:40):
his father. His father went to prison for quite a
while and ended up earning two degrees while he was
in prison. He even gave up the opportunity to leave
prison early because he wanted to finish a degree while
he was in there. He allegedly owns hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of properties in many places, allegedly. I
(33:03):
haven't actually seen property deeds or anything like that, but um,
you know, we're talking like five million dollar home in
one place, hundred sixty million dollar home in another place,
like multiple properties, so many properties in Ireland. That guy,
the father, was very good at what he was doing,
and apparently very good at hiding money and travel and
(33:24):
keeping operations at very secret. And he is alive right
now as we record. He is happily retired in Spain.
The father that is, uh, yes, yeah, there is. There
is a strong indication that I like the way you
put it, that he learned from the best, and people
(33:46):
believe they've cracked the code. Detective Superintendent David Gallagher from
the National Drugs and Organized Crime Bureau of Ireland walked
through the hierarchy of the gang of the organization in
court and he said, they have this structure. It's very clever.
It's kind of thing you know, you and I would do. Probably.
(34:09):
They have sub cells that everybody's organized into these cells,
and they're structured such that if an operation goes wrong
or if someone tries to turn into an informant, which
Irish media calls turning tout. By the way, I thought
that was so cool, if someone does try to snitch,
(34:31):
they will literally not have the information they need because
they'll only know about their part of the of the web, right,
and they're part of the process well, and it's structures
that if somebody from that sub cell is seeking information,
specific information from higher up, it becomes an incredibly suspicious thing.
(34:52):
And you, yeah, it's a way to root out people
who may have turned out. Yes, it's true. It works
both way. So authorities also maintain that, yes, the organization's
move towards the world of boxing. Maybe real, legitimate actually
has happened, but that doesn't mean that it's also, you know,
(35:15):
not still a crime ring. That's that's basically their argument.
They're making that face any court that matches made. So
there you have it. This story has some updates that
will get to at the end of the show, but
first let's take a break for word from our sponsor,
and then we'll come back to talk just a little
(35:37):
bit about boxing, your crime in general, where there is
a great deal of stuff they don't want you to know.
All right, we are back and we are jumping into
boxing and crime in general, a little bit of corruption,
a little side of corruption. Uh. There's an outlet called
(35:58):
Journal dot i E. It's actually really great. You should
check it out if you can. There's a lot of
cool reporting in the in there about boxing, just as
the sport and this topic in general. Here's a quote
from them. The sport and business of boxing has been
infiltrated by criminal elements for the best part of two decades.
(36:19):
The potential to earn large amounts of cash and to
rub shoulders with the rich and famous at ringsides around
the world proved alluring for Ireland's top criminals. Now this
makes sense if you've ever I'm gonna take it to
m A instead of boxing. But it's it's it's not
the same thing, right from a sport, from a science perspective,
(36:41):
from the sport itself, but in the events, boxing and
m m A are very very very similar. If you
look at something the UFC puts on and a big
pay per view show, let's say something that happened not
long ago. Connor McGregor is fighting, and you know before
of course warantine and all of the coronavirus implementations where
(37:03):
there's nobody in the audience. When you look at one
of these big matches down at the front right near
the ring, there are going to be celebrities and powerful individuals,
many times faceless powerful individuals those who don't show up
in the newspaper all the time, don't You don't recognize
them when their face flashes across. But that person in
(37:24):
that audience may be extremely powerful. Yeah. Absolutely, you get
access and and access is a extremely valuable thing. So
to react to that claim, what do we say, Well, yes,
the conspiracy is real. I mean for numerous reasons, Boxing
(37:45):
as his sport, has a long association with crime, and
it also has just the way it's structured, it has
a great potential to be exploited and corrupted. I mean,
think about it, right, I still I always think when
we spoke with Brian Tooey m boxing in particular, you
have a very small set of what we could think
(38:07):
of as players, primarily the two boxers, but we also
have just a few officials, right, And you know, a
fight can be one based on a decision by those
those officials. So if any one of those people is
convinced to take a dive, or if they're bribed to
go one way or another with a decision, then it
(38:29):
can be extraordinarily difficult to prove the fight was fixed,
Which means if you want to get into that business,
you have two cool sources of revenue. Now you can
generate a ton of money through gambling and rigged outcomes.
You can also launder a ton of dirty money because
it's gambling. So what's not to love? Like? It makes
(38:51):
sense to me? Um, I've never fixed the boxing match,
but I can see the appeal for certain certain people
in the industry, and the weird part of out it
is for fans of boxing and boxers themselves. You're probably
much better off now than you were in the nineteen
fifties when boxing was crazy dirty, Like the US Senate
(39:12):
investigated boxing. Uh, there's a there's a cool site we
found called the Ring that that has a neat anecdote
that I really think puts this in perspective. Sure. Here
it is the very era that many recall as one
of the sports true golden ages, was so brazenly filthy
and infested with gangsters and other ne'er dwells that the
(39:36):
January thirty one, nineteen fifty five issue of Sports Illustrated
concluded an investigative piece on the state of the sports
with the sentence, boxing today is a national scandal. Boxing today,
it's national scandal back in the nineteen fifties. So we
often note the relationship between large amounts of money and
(39:58):
corruption in multiple industries, right, and everything from investment banking
to reality TV the stock marketed course. Uh, even without
considering the Kinahan case specifically, it turns out boxing is
no different. And that is a crying shame because boxers,
(40:18):
you know, the actual people, not the industry surrounding them,
are working their keysters off to be the best athletes
they can possibly be. And as we said earlier, you know,
there's there's a pretty compelling argument to make that boxing
is as much as science in some sense as it
is a sport. But you could say that there are
two fights for every bout. One is the fight between
(40:41):
the people in the ring, and the other is the fight,
the ongoing fight that legitimate athletes and fans of the
sport have against incredibly powerful forces that seek to poison
the game they love. As we draw to a close here,
you know, Matt, obviously we have to point out at
this juncture there has been no accusation that Kinahan himself
(41:05):
is attempting to rig this the world's most important upcoming
boxing match, and in fact, Ireland is so scandalized by
his involvement that no one's really bothered to float the
possibility of him fixing a match or asked how likely
that might be. Given statements of industry professionals and athletes,
(41:26):
it seems like people in that industry, a lot of
people overwhelmingly trust him. So there there we find kind
of the morality that we were talking about at the top.
You know, it's I get I get the sense. I
don't know if you feel this way. But I get
the sense that um, people believe Kinahan, regardless of what
(41:48):
else he does, probably holds the sport in very high
esteem and would react pretty adversely. I think it would
be offended if people said, hey, you're gonna fix this match, right,
and he doesn't. Regardless what you believe, he doesn't seem
like the kind of person you would want to offend now,
just because of his power in the sport, right, It
(42:10):
doesn't matter if he's associated with any organized crime, and
he his word means something generally. And again here's another quote,
just when talking about his connections within the sport itself,
outside of anything else here, it is um. This is
a source that said it's harder to find a boxer
(42:30):
not linked to Kinahan than one who is. He dominates
the boxing world and everyone knows it. Daniel Kinahan himself,
as well as the organization that he's allegedly involved with,
and the Hutch gang that is the one at odds
with the Kinahan cartel. It is weird to look at
events and the social media feeds of popular boxers and
(42:55):
m m A fighters. It is weird to see these
characters show up in selfies. They show up in behind
the scenes photographs of training. Um, it does feel like
there's a real connection there. Although you know, if you're
not in the guarda Guardia, if you're not in the
FBI or whatever, whoever, whatever organizations are investigating organized crime
(43:19):
groups like that, it's tough to know whether any of
it is real, whether just because they're associated in pictures,
just because their ringside, just because they, you know, own
a gym, some organization owns a gym where important fighters train.
It doesn't necessarily mean that everybody's in on the same game,
but the connections and the associations, it's tough to to miss. Yeah,
(43:42):
well said, Well said. And for a deeper look at
the Kinahan case of do check out the excellent BBC
Panorama documentary we talked about earlier. Uh. They argue that Kinahan,
regardless of his current association's auster present companies, continues to
(44:03):
influence individual boxers and players in the industry on a
personal level. Like he's he is embedded in this um,
in this enterprise in such a way that it's very
difficult to take him out of it, you know. Uh. Also,
recent reports from March argued that kid Ahan might be
(44:25):
branching out the soccer football for of course the rest
of the world through the actions of his former company
m t K. But that's kind of sticky because again,
officially he cut ties and as the outcry over Fury
and Kinahan's association grew, Fury ended up distancing himself from
(44:46):
Kinahan with Kinahan's blessing. By the way, the way it's portrayed,
it's it's got big mafia vibes, the way they the
way they talk about it, you know, But a lot
of that might just be the reporters. That's that's another
part of it. So there we are, folks, the world
of boxing, the world of crime, the saga of Daniel
(45:08):
Kinahan and the Kinahan family. What do you think? Again,
this is a fascinating story for us, but we keep
coming to it back to the fact that, you know,
this guy has never been convicted of anything, you know
what I mean? And do you is it fair to
judge the sudden by the sins of the father. I
I don't know. I don't know if it is, and
(45:30):
I don't think it is. But at the same time,
there are dedicated law enforcement officers, investigators who believe that
this is what's happening. This is the thing, and there
has been a ton of bloodshed associated here um and
lives ruined and destroyed. And you know, that's a tough situation.
But it's really hard too because as a fan of
(45:53):
of combat sports, like I want to I want to
still be able to watch boxing matches in in m
m A fights and stuff, and it depending on how
deep this corruption is, maybe I shouldn't want to do that,
but dang it if I if I don't want to
tune in um dude, since the ever since The Ultimate Fighter, like, like,
(46:14):
I can't get enough of these things. And I don't
know why. I don't know. I don't know. If it's
just some deep thing inside of us as humans that
enjoy that the stakes of having two people like locked
in a cage that have to battle with each other.
Maybe there's just something deep, deeply in our nature about that.
In my nature at least, I don't I don't want it.
(46:36):
I don't want it to go away because it's corrupt.
I don't know. It's a tough one. We'd love to
know what you think about all of that stuff. Agreed, Yeah,
let us know. People who are familiar with the story.
People who are familiar with the sport. We'd like to
hear from you, and we try to make it easy
to find us online. Yeah, that's right. You can find
us on Twitter and Facebook where we are conspiracy Stuff.
On Instagram we are a conspiracy stuff show. If you
(46:59):
want to find us personally, Ben's got Twitter and Instagram going.
I think that's true. Yes, the rumors are true. You
can find me at Ben bolland h s W on Twitter,
uh the longtime listeners? Do you know what hs W means?
And you can also find me on Instagram where I
am named in a burst of creativity at Ben Bolan
(47:22):
bow L. I n how about you, Matt. You know,
sometimes sometimes you tell us about where to bind you
online and then sometimes you don't. I know, I I
this time, I'm not going to What I am going
to say though, is the first time I ever met
the founder of that thing called hs W that you
just mentioned. I was on the set of a video
(47:45):
called How Boxing Works, that's right, and it was the
first time I got to be DP or run run
the camera, essentially be the videographer on on a set
and it was great. We shot with an actual I
think he became a champion when we when we were
shooting with him, this boxer, he had just won some competition. Um,
(48:09):
I can't remember what it was, but he was incredible anyway,
it's a weird, weird, weird thing. First video, are we
becoming sentimental Elder podcast stage? Well, if that's the case,
then hurry up and get to us before we before
we expire, hopefully if natural non boxing related causes. If
(48:33):
you don't care for social media, you can call us directly.
We have a phone number where one eight three three
st d w y t K three minutes. Those three
minutes belong to you. Uh, tell us whatever is on
your mind. We do ask you know that you include
the following things. Give us your name or a sick
(48:54):
nickname and let us know we can use your voice
or story on the air. Tell us what's up, give
us ideas for new episodes, and if there's something personal
that you want to just tell you know, keep between
you and our team. Then that's fine. Just throw it
in at the end. But most importantly, do not censor yourself.
(49:16):
If you have a story that doesn't fit in three minutes,
then tell us the whole thing, write it out, send
us an email. We read every email we get. You
can find us whether you are in the ring or
out outside of the ring, at our good old fashioned
email address where we are conspiracy at i heart radio
dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is
(49:57):
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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