Till poses with Kinahan, again

Daniel Kinahan has been accused of operating a billion dollar drug trafficking empire and ordering the assassinations of gangland rivals.

Today UFC headliner Darren Till uploaded a picture of himself smiling with one arm draped over Daniel Kinahan. The tweet included the caption, “Good stroll on the beach tonight in Dubai with one of me good pals.”

This isn’t the first time Till has posed next to Kinahan in the Middle East.

Courts in Ireland have named Kinahan as the leader of a group they have dubbed the Kinahan Organization Crime Group (KOCG), a billion dollar drug and weapon trafficking ring that is sometimes called The Kinahan Cartel.

In addition to being accused of being the top supplier of narcotics into Ireland, the KOCG is linked to a string of murders across Ireland and Spain. Those killings are believed to be part of the Hutch-Kinahan feud, a conflict that began in 2015.

The feud began when Gary Hutch was gunned down in southern Spain. Hutch was the nephew of alleged Hutch Gang boss Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch. After this killing, Kinahan’s father Christy Kinahan, the alleged founder of the group, invited Hutch to a sit-down to avert any retaliation.

It is believed Hutch rejected the offer. Hutch then narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in a bar in Lanzarote.

Police say that Hutch reacted to that botched assassination by ordering the Regency Hotel Shooting in 2016. That shooting, which took place at a boxing weigh-in, resulted in the death of David Byrne a suspected top lieutenant in the KOCG. It is believed that Kinahan was the target of this attack.

After that shooting Kinahan fled to Dubai, where he remains today. Hutch was recently arrested in Spain and extradited back to Ireland where he is due to stand trial for Byrne’s murder. The Hutch-Kinahan feud is believed to have resulted in at least 18 deaths, including those of Hutch’s brother and another one of his nephews.

The boxing show that was targeted during the Regency Hotel attack was promoted by Macklin’s Gym Marbella, an organization Kinahan founded. After the shooting MGM rebranded to become MTK Global. As MTK the company grew to become one of the most powerful brokers in world boxing and MMA. MTK have claimed Kinahan ended his involvement with the company after the rebrand, but plenty of evidence to the contrary exists.

Kinahan’s relationship with MTK was the subject of the BBC documentary Boxing and the Mob.

Today MTK represents dozens of top boxers and MMA fighters including Till. Other fighters on their roster are Tyson Fury, Billy Joe Saunders, Josh Taylor, Aleksandar Rakic, Mounir Lazzez, Taila Santos, Sumadaerji, and Dusko Todorovic.

Till appears to be in Dubai to attend the first ever boxing show promoted by Probellum. According to internet sleuths, trademarks for the term Probellum were registered by a company that used to be called MTK Global Management LTD.

Bloody Elbow reached out to the UFC for reaction to Till’s association with Kinahan. We are yet to receive a response.