Simon Jordan takes Frank Warren to task and labels Tyson Fury ‘crybaby’ over talkSPORT ban

Simon Jordan and Frank Warren have clarified the issues behind Tyson Fury’s so-called ban on talkSPORT.

This began when Fury’s brother, Shane, said in an interview that both talkSPORT and Jordan ‘will never have anything to do with Tyson again.’

This is due to the fact that Jordan had criticised Fury for how he conducted himself in previous negotiation for an undisputed clash with Oleksandr Usyk that fell through, although the fight has since been signed.

‘The Gypsy King’ also seems to have taken issue with Jordan’s criticism of his upcoming fight against former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou, who is making his professional debut, that will take place on Saturday night in Saudi Arabia.

Fury’s promoter, Warren, joined Jordan and Jim White live on talkSPORT to discuss the supposed ban.

“He doesn’t want to speak to Simon, that’s a fact…,” Warren explained. “But look, that’s his choice and that’s his prerogative, he’s not obliged to speak to anybody who he doesn’t want to speak to.

“The fact is, you always have the last word, as soon as the interview is finished you can go on and make your comments and that doesn’t end too well.

“And what has happened constantly since this fight has been announced has been total misinformation and prior to that the misinformation that was being put out regarding our endeavours to make the Usyk fight and he’s got p’ed off with it, because he never dodged anybody, nor has he had the intention too.

“And now, it’s an accepted fact, except maybe by a couple of people at talkSPORT, that what we said is how it happened.”

Jordan replied: “Frank with respect you can’t re-write history because that’s not what happened.”

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Before continuing: “What was actually said, on the back of Usyk’s manager accusing Fury of ducking the fight is that if Fury ducks this fight he should be ashamed of it. That’s it. that’s all that’s been said.

“Well he didn’t duck the fight,” Warren said.

“But, nobody said he did,” Jordan quickly clapped back.

The pair then went back and forth over what was said during the earlier unsuccessful and very public negotiations between Fury and Usyk.

Before Jordan went on: “Listen to what I’m saying. Usyk’s management accused you guys of ducking the fight, we opined on that, we said, simple it’s not difficult to follow, if Fury is ducking this fight he should be ashamed of it, end of conversation.”

The talkBOXING host then pointed out he has been one of Fury’s biggest supporters stretching back to when he beat Wladimir Klitschko in 2015 to backing him in his battle against another major broadcaster.

“When people are throwing around silly little diatribes about me who has been a massive supporter of Tyson Fury’s from the winning of the Klitschko fight through to his re-invigoration and supporting him against the BBC when the BBC wanted to put him in to Sports Personality of the Year – except when I’ve made a couple of observations that haven’t been praiseworthy.

“And what you’ve got is a crybaby who is an embarrassment and you should be embarrassed representing him if he wants to behave like this with a major broadcaster. It’s embarrassing Frank, he’s a child.”

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Understandably, Warren defended his fighter. “It’s not embarrassing and he’s not child. That’s insulting and maybe when you see him you can tell him that to his face.”

Jordan accepted this saying: “I will I’m quite happy to Frank.”

“Well I’ll arrange it then when we come back,” Warren said, “but the fact of life is, what you’re saying is it’s always your opinion, you don’t know Tyson, you don’t know what he’s been through, you don’t know what the man thinks…”

Jordan then interrupted to say: “It’s childish behaviour, Frank.”

Warren then challenged him to define the claim.

Jordan answered: “To suggest that people who have been hugely supportive of him – and you know I have, Frank – a couple of derogatory things that he doesn’t like and he turns around and says I’m banning the broadcaster? That’s childish, Frank and you know it is, but you won’t say because he’s a cash cow for you.”

The two men then spoke over each other, while there were issues with Warren’s audio, but talk then turned to the Usyk fight and the issue some fans had with the time it took to get over the line.

“What is stupid about this, all this time it’s taken to make this fight, ‘oh, we’re all ducking it’, you know what, it was the quickest unification match that’s been made ever.

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“[Usyk] only had the rematch with Joshua last year, so it’s been roughly 14-16 months to this thing being signed. Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson didn’t fight for ten years and I could reel off loads of fights, so please do not keep going on about Tyson ducking fights.”

Jordan then countered: “When you’ve got one camp saying one thing and one camp saying another… so what we had – so you get the context right – was someone saying on the other side of the argument, Usyk’s camp, that [Fury] ducked it.

“We said if he is ducking it he should be ashamed. If, not he is [ducking it]. You then qualified it with me, you then told me the reasons why the Ngannou fight was coming on and that’s the end of the conversation.

“The rest of the background nonsense is people being childish and pathetic little YouTubers taking content from one of the main stream broadcasters and using it as an opportunity to create division.

“You know that this platform brings 1.2 million listeners to your sport and you should be supporting that rather than Tyson behaving like a child.”

Again, though, Warren defended Fury from the accusation. “It’s not about behaving like a child, if that’s how he feels then that’s how he feels, he’s got a fight coming up… but irrespective of that he should get the kudos for what he’s done, he’s been brilliant as a fighter.”

Jordan pointed back to his previous point about talking him up.

“He’s been raved about. Everyone raves about him, we all rave about him, we think that generationally he’s the best heavyweight. What are you on about, Frank? You know that’s what we do.”

Warren then qualified his comment in response to tell talkSPORT this was no whine from him.

Co-host White then decided to step in and get some clarification as to whether talkSPORT is actually banned from the Fury vs Ngannou fight.

“No-one’s banned from talkSPORT, where did you get this from?” Warren asked before telling the studio: “Get your a**es out here.”

The whole room burst into laughter and Jordan joked: “I can’t be banned from a fight I didn’t want to go to anyway.”

White finished by telling Warren: “Have a word with your fighter, let him know that Mr Jordan is not on air [on Friday], he’s doing other things, but I am, so why not organise Tyson for us and I will conduct the chat live on talkSPORT.”

Warren, however, explained that he wouldn’t be disturbing Fury on fight week.

The call finished relatively amicably with Warren saying that all he’s heard is that Fury didn’t want the rights to this fight sold to talkSPORT, but afterwards ‘we’ll see what happens’.