It was this week revealed by BoxingScene that Spencer Brown, of Gold Star Promotions, will be the lead promoter for the forthcoming Tyson Fury-Arslanbek Makhmudov show on April 11 in London.

That news – which was first confirmed to BoxingScene by the British Boxing Board of Control on Wednesday (March 11) – has pricked the ears of Eddie Hearn, the Matchroom promoter who recently saw Conor Benn wave goodbye and sign a surprising deal with Dana White’s Zuffa Boxing.

Benn, who had been signed to Matchroom since 2016, is set to make his Zuffa debut on that April 11 undercard in a 10-rounder against Regis Prograis.

During an interview with IFL TV on Thursday (March 12), when it was put to Hearn that Brown will be the lead promoter on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium event, he replied: “Is that confirmed, though? Because [Zuffa’s] Mark Shapiro came out on the investor call, which you can’t lie on, and he said, ‘we are the promoters of Fury-Makhmudov’.

“We’ll be looking to get confirmation of that because it’s quite important to us,” Hearn continued. “Does that mean that Conor Benn is not fighting on a Zuffa card?”

Hearn, who is considering his legal position regarding Benn’s move to Zuffa, has been working as a licensed promoter in Britain since 2012. He will know, therefore, that unless a promoter has British licence he cannot be the lead promoter on a British event.

“I don’t want to interfere with an investor call where Mark Shapiro is telling investors, and the market, that they are the promoters of Fury-Makhmudov,” Hearn said. “I could have told you at the time they weren’t. But it has now – apparently – been confirmed that they’re not the promoters and Spencer Brown is the promoter.

“We’re going to need confirmation of that. We will be pursuing that, 100 per cent.”

Robert Smith, of the BBBofC, today (March 13) told BoxingScene: “As far as we are concerned it is a Spencer Brown show. He is responsible for the show, he is our contact for the show. It is his show and nobody else’s show.”

So, if a representative of Zuffa, like Dana White, was going to work on the event in an official capacity they would need be report to Brown?

“Gold Star will be the lead promoter,” Smith said. “But he can run the show ‘in association with’ an American promoter which is something we’ve seen many times. Top Rank, for example, have worked alongside Matchroom and Queensberry in the past but, on each occasion, the official promoter of the event is always the British promoter.

"The lead promoter on a British show must hold a British licence."