The sound of the bullets inside Dublin’s Regency Hotel was the first warning. The second quickly followed via piercing screams as those in attendance ran for their lives. A third warning, widespread media coverage of death by shooting at a boxing weigh-in, should have been the last.
Daniel Kinahan, the alleged head of a violent drug cartel, was the man for whom those shots were designed on that grey February 2016 day. The Irishman fled the scene but boxing, Kinahan’s latest project, didn’t move nor hide. It remained fixed on the spot, in fact, and for the next six years chose to deny that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.
The arrest last week of Kinahan, one of the most influential figures in boxing until he was sanctioned by the US Treasury in April 2022, has left many wondering what may now happen to those in the sport who engaged in business with him and his associates.
“There will be people in boxing that are nervous now, there simply has to be,” Kieran Cunningham, an Irish journalist of high regard, told BoxingScene. “The reason that this story interests so many people, far more than other cartels, is the links to a sport like boxing. My [Shadow Boxing] podcast reached more than 120 countries, it was the most listened to outside of premier league football [podcasts]. That level of interest could trigger deep investigations.”
Kinahan co-founded MGM Marbella with Matthew Macklin in 2012. It would soon become MTK Global, a one-stop management and promotional shop, that attracted boxers in their droves. It was easy to see why, too; boxers, including plenty who were previously struggling for opportunities and pay, were suddenly getting both with certain purses higher than what would have been deemed market value.
Though it was later claimed Kinahan had sold his share in MTK, it was believed that the association continued until the company closed suddenly in 2022, days after a bounty of $5m was put on the Irishman’s head. Probellum, another promotional vehicle with links to Kinahan, didn’t last much longer.
He was by then living a luxurious life in Dubai, the haven where he would eventually be arrested, on Wednesday April 15, in accordance with a bilateral agreement on extradition between Ireland and the United Arab Emirates.
“The arrest followed the receipt of a judicial file from Irish authorities detailing the suspect’s alleged crimes and his involvement in an international criminal organisation,” said a spokesperson from Dubai police.
“Based on the file, Dubai public prosecution issued an arrest warrant to initiate legal procedures ahead of his extradition. Specialised teams immediately launched intensive search and surveillance operations, leading to the suspect’s capture within 48 hours of the warrant being issued.”
The work that went into such a smooth arrest was decades in the making, however. Work that, for a time, was centred in the world of boxing. There are numerous files detailing Kinahan’s movements in the sport, BoxingScene has been told. And it’s the paper trails – or indeed, lack of – that those who worked with him might now be thinking carefully about. For example, text conversations that occurred on crypted phones from the time of Kinahan’s peak within boxing have been cracked by authorities. It’s plausible that certain deals that were secured in boxing, and the financial terms of them, occurred while using those phones from which the authorities have already obtained details.
Nicola Tallant, an Irish investigative journalist who specialises in organised crime, told BoxingScene that she thinks “there is a huge focus on the money laundering by the Spanish police. That is where the boxing types would have a problem.”
For too long, too many in boxing acted like there was no problem at all. Within three years of that shooting in Dublin, Kinahan was among the fight game’s most important figures: brokering deals; guiding big-name boxers; schmoozing with the most influential. It was a curious situation, though. Because even though major promoters worked with him, and some of the finest fighters in the world employed him in a managerial/advisory capacity, nobody dared utter his name in public. Should his name come up in an interview, for example, the answer – if one came at all – would always be prefixed by ‘off record’. That alone should have said it all.
Then it happened. With the world in lockdown in June 2020, and with Kinahan seemingly yearning for some recognition as something other than a presumed gangster, his name was uttered by Tyson Fury, the WBC heavyweight champion for whom he had arranged a two-fight deal with Anthony Joshua. Fury’s by now infamous social media address thrust Kinahan, and his role in boxing, into the mainstream thanks to Fury’s 5.7m followers on Instagram. Fury, incidentally, would later claim that the relationship with Kinahan ceased soon afterwards.
According to a 2025 piece in respected magazine, the New Yorker, it was that post by Fury, which began, “I’m just after getting off the phone to Daniel Kinahan…” that piqued the interest of the United States Drugs Enforcement Administration. Chris Urben, then a DEA investigator, told the New Yorker: “I remember having the conversation, ‘This cannot happen. This has got to stop’.”
Ordinarily broadcasters would be eager to attach themselves to a contest as huge as Fury vs. Joshua but Sky Sports, then the leading distributor of live boxing in the UK, immediately stated they were not involved. TNT Sport, another British sports channel, quickly followed their rival’s lead.
The quest for acceptance continued regardless. Bob Arum, arguably then the world’s leading promoter, called him ‘Captain’ and praised his professionalism. IFLTV, the YouTube channel that was sponsored by MTK, became a propaganda machine for Kinahan as fighters, trainers and managers were invited to share tales about what a top bloke he was. Each were in some way earning money from him; the least they could do, it seemed, was spread the word.
A BBC documentary, broadcast in 2021, spelt out both the extent of Kinahan’s involvement in boxing and his connections with crime. Still, nobody seemed to care. “It won’t change a thing,” a top promoter told me back then about Panorama: Boxing and the Mob. “It didn’t tell us anything that everybody doesn’t already know, did it? As a promoter, I will continue to deal with whoever I’m instructed to deal with to get the best possible deal for the fighter.”
In March 2022, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman, in a move he now regrets, stated in part: “…Daniel will have our full support in his quest to bring benefits to boxing.” Those words came in the same week it was revealed that 53 people connected to the Kinahan cartel had so far been jailed and a fortnight before it was officially announced that he was one of the world’s most wanted men.
With the sanctioning came awkward silence. Anyone who was now known to be doing business with him would face legal action; anyone who had done so before started to check the terms of their deals very carefully.
“It isn’t straightforward dealing with boxing post-Kinahan because he left so much residue,” said Cunningham. “I can’t prove it, but I’ve been told by several people that he was still involved [after the sanctions].” Without question, numerous people who were known colleagues of Kinahan have been seen at boxing events, including some big ones, since the sanctions.
It's likely, however, that the fighters who Kinahan represented will escape any charges because, though it can’t completely be ruled out, they surely won’t have been routing money or structuring deals to do so. In short, without proof of deep involvement or knowledge of the cartel, it would be hard for authorities to implicate them in crime.
It could be a different matter for managers and intermediaries who negotiated purses, benefited from the launch of certain businesses, directed money or utilised international payment structures to get the most from that money. The practices of some promoters, particularly those who represented MTK, might face scrutiny, too.
As for Kinahan, who is currently in a Dubai prison, Cunningham warned that those expecting a quick conclusion could be mistaken, citing the case of Sean McGovern, a senior member of the Kinahan cartel, as context. “His extradition [from Dubai to Ireland] took seven to eight months,” said Cunningham of McGovern, who engaged in a “secretive and complicated” legal battle in Dubai to prevent the extradition that eventually occurred in May 2025. “Kinahan will have the best lawyers working for him and fighting this.”
The waiting game is underway, regardless.
