Daniel Kinahan, key boxing financier, arrested. Why now?

Is the United Arab Emirates looking for a favor? Or was Kinahan working with Iran?

You knew it was a matter of time when CIA-friendly Bellingcat was recently helping The Sunday Times post recent images of Daniel Kinahan at a UAE-based cage fighting event.

If you paid close attention to what both Bellingcat and the Times were focusing on, today’s arrest of Mr. Kinahan will not surprise you.

It’s supposedly about Iranian oil tankers.

Nobody will directly come out and say “we arrested Daniel Kinahan for working with Iran” but it is an interesting theory if you connect the dots from recent media and government-aligned reporting.

In March of 2026, The Sunday Times published an explosive article about fighter Mounir Lazzez. The report claimed that Mssrs. Kinahan and Lazzez were deeply involved in evading sanctions:

Today an investigation by The Sunday Times and the open-source investigative group Bellingcat reveals how Lazzez is not just a former cage fighter. He is a key figure in shipping crude oil from Iran to China, which bypasses global sanctions and finances the Iranian regime.

Tankers to which he is linked have been sanctioned for their involvement with Iran, one over its links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group.

But these ships are also linked to the Kinahans through an address in the Marshall Islands which was used by another tanker seized off the Irish coast carrying two tonnes of cocaine for their cartel.

Cocaine. Sanctions. Oil tankers. Boxing. What a world we live in.

Kinahan’s KO of the UK boxing scene

Mounir Lazzez was one of many fighters associated with Kinahan combat sports management company MTK Global.

The same MTK Global that signed Tyson Fury. This Guardian quote from Mr. Fury on his relationship with Mr. Kinahan was rather peculiar.

Meanwhile Fury had stressed to the media, during an open workout on Tuesday afternoon: “It’s none of my business … it’s got nowt to do with me.”

When pressed to discuss MTK, with the company yet to announce its imminent closure, Fury also denied that he retained any links with the organisation. “I have never been sponsored by MTK ever,” he said. When reminded that he used to be part of the MTK stable and had worn their logo, he responded bluntly. “That was from 2017 until 2020. Three years and that was it. Done. End of.”

Tyson Fury has not traveled to The United States to compete in boxing since his 2020 MGM Grand Garden Arena bout with Deontay Wilder.

However, Mr. Fury did manage to publicly thank Mr. Kinahan for helping negotiate a fight with Anthony Joshua. That fight never materialized. Now, Turki Alalshikh wants that fight to happen in 2026.

The same Kinahan-backed MTK Global was supposedly going to have a working relationship with Probellum.

The executives associated with Probellum? Canelo Alvarez’s financial adviser, Richard Schaefer, and current Zuffa Boxing COO (and former Top Rank general counsel) Harrison Whitman.

The same Harrison Whitman that Bob Arum claimed to Kevin Iole was facilitating deals with Daniel Kinahan for Tyson Fury fights.

Arum, whose company will co-promote Fury’s April 23 title defense in London against Dillian Whyte with Frank Warren’s Queensbury Promotions, told Yahoo Sports Thursday he’d paid Kinahan “at least a million” in each of those four fights against Deontay Wilder twice, Tom Schwarz and Otto Wallin. The fights between Fury and Wilder were each for the WBC heavyweight title. The other two bouts were non-title matches.

Top Rank paid the money to a company called Hoopoe Sports Agent that is registered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for what Arum said were consulting fees owed Kinahan. The deals for the Fury fights were put together by Harrison Whitman, Top Rank’s former general counsel, who is now the chief strategy and legal officer of a new boxing promotional company called Probellum.

Here’s how Mr. Schaefer recounted his Probellum experience to Thomas Hauser in 2025 for The Ring:

Harrison Whitman (Top Rank’s former general counsel) asked Schaefer if he would meet with a group of businessmen to discuss running a new promotional company called Probellum that had been founded by Ali Shams Pour, who owns Glentoran FC in Northern Ireland.

Schaefer agreed to serve as Probellum’s president. Eric Winter, formerly an executive with UFC, would be the chief operating officer. Anthony Petosa, with a decade of production experience at UFC, was charged with shaping the look and feel of platform content. Anthony Catanzaro, previously the senior boxing advisor for Barclays Center, was slated to become vice president of business operations.

But there was a problem.

Probellum was linked to Daniel Kinahan. And on April 11, 2022, the United States Treasury Department sanctioned Kinahan, as well as six other individuals and three companies that he was believed to have done business with, for what the government said was his role as “leader of the Kinahan Organized Crime Group.”

“Like every promoter in the world, we were working with Daniel Kinahan,” Schaefer says. “Then the shit hit the fan and the whole thing fell apart.”

Funny enough, boxing manager Billy Keane filed a lawsuit against Top Rank alleging non-payment over deals that supposedly involved… Daniel Kinahan.

Intriguingly, Harrison Whitman wasn’t listed as a defendant, but he does appear to be a rather special non-party to the case—a lawsuit brought to Federal court by Patty Glaser’s high-powered Hollywood law firm.

When the 2022 US sanctions hit Daniel Kinahan, no one wanted to talk about their prior experiences working with him in boxing — especially with MTK Global.

This included historian and television executive Bob Yalen, who was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame. When Alan Dawson at Business Insider asked Mr. Yalen about Mr. Kinahan, he got the cold shoulder.

The connection between MTK Global and Dubai was no secret, as noted by The Guardian.

Yet in May 2020 Sandra Vaughan, who was Yalen’s predecessor, said in an interview that Kinahan advised fighters to sign management deals with MTK and operated as an independent adviser to some of their boxers. MTK also released a statement in 2020 that delighted in a new partnership between Kinahan and the Dubai-based KHK Sports, which had appointed him as its special adviser: “This is a monumental move for KHK Sports and MTK Global. Both organisations have been making substantial waves in the international combats sports landscape and, combined, the sky is the limit in what they can achieve.”

Once the US levied sanctions against Daniel Kinahan, the global manhunt was on to target Kinahan-associated and affiliated gangs. The recent arrest of Scottish crime boss Steven Lyons in Bali, who was allegedly closely connected to Mr. Kinahan, drew major attention throughout the European continent.

Daniel Kinahan was one of the bigger players in financing and facilitating major boxing transactions in the UK scene. When he was sidelined, it was Riyadh Season that stepped in to fill the void.

This week’s one-two combination of the Saudis pulling back on sporting investments, combined with Daniel Kinahan’s arrest on Friday, will undoubtedly have some important UK boxing managers and promoters nervous.

And it appears that both developments are connected to fallout from the war between the United States and Iran.

The Irish Times published an article last month asking the obvious question: Why are Dubai prosecutors protecting Daniel Kinahan?

The Iranian war with America and Israel has hit the UAE hard. Very hard. The Emirates have a lot of work ahead of them, not only in repairing their financial image but also their global image as a safe place for the world’s richest expats. It’s why the UAE has been reportedly extraordinarily sensitive in cracking down on any public photos showing war damage (and allegedly photos and incident reports sent privately to friends and family).

Daniel Kinahan’s arrest is, indeed, an interesting development. The more interesting angle is why now for the Emirates?

Perhaps Mr. Kinahan’s supposed ties to the Iranian oil trade with China did him in?

Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com.