Frank Warren adamant that he will not host Joyce-Dubois behind closed doors

Frank Warren penned a column for Metro earlier today, taking on a trio of topics. In addition to advising Mike Tyson to stick to amateur fights and calling speculation on Tyson Fury’s next fight “pointless,” he gives an update on what would have been Queensberry Promotions’ marquee spring card: Joe Joyce vs. Daniel Dubois.

We’re waiting for some kind of clarification from the British government. It looks like we’ll have to put some fights on behind closed doors, but Dubois-Joyce is not one I’d consider doing with no crowd. That fight needs a live audience. It needs the gate it generates and I think we had less than a thousand tickets left before we moved the date. Nobody wants to put fights on behind closed doors.

But if we don’t do it then the sport won’t be relevant. Then we’ll get into a situation where we won’t be on TV. Sky and BT need live sport to keep their subscribers. Football is their main cash cow, but when it comes to them cutting costs, we don’t want to be at risk. If we don’t put on fights our sport will suffer.

The undefeated heavyweights were slated to go at it on April 11th, then got pushed back to July 11th. While a lot can change in two months, I don’t think even the Tories would be keen on cramming a stadium full of people in the near future. If Warren sticks to his guns, we could easily be waiting until 2021 for them to lock horns. I would imagine that if the timeline does get away from them, we could see Joyce (10-0, 9 KO) and Dubois (14-0, 13 KO) taking tune-up bouts without an audience

When the card does go down, it will presumably still feature Chris Jenkins vs. Johnny Garton for the Commonwealth and British welterweight belts, plus Anthony Yarde against Lyndon Arthur.