On this nook of the Universo Pugilistico is my bulging, bulbous, aching sack and the gooey, salty reality contained inside. So…sit again, shut your eyes, pull again your hair, and prepare for this week’s cash shot of knowledge. This week we’ve feedback/questions concerning boxing individuals promoting themselves out to the Saudis.
Idiot me As soon as, Disgrace on You. Idiot me Twice, Disgrace on me?
First, hope you and the household are doing properly. Maintain combating the great struggle for boxing.
Second, a clever man as soon as mentioned, when a person tells you who he’s, you higher consider him. Turki has LITERALLY advised and proven Eddie, Warren, Arum, and Oscar what he’s going to do. YET, they elected to proceed to work with Turki. They need to be working for his or her lives, however their not. Why?
– BIG Rob
Hey Massive Rob.
Thanks.
The brief reply is that these persons are grifters and that’s all they know.
They’re so hyper-focused on chasing the fast buck that they’ll see nothing else. They’re like mosquitoes drawn to bug zappers. They gotta chase that mild, even when it means getting fried right into a crisp.
Grifters additionally consider that they’re untouchable, that they’re gonna get this subsequent rating after which fear about every thing else later. I’m certain all of those guys have the identical ideas about working with Turki, who has, actually, arrange a corporation to exchange them and mentioned he plans on crushing them. They’re going to make the cash they nonetheless can with him whereas working by present contracts after which hope to be one of many few boxing individuals allowed to remain within the Saudis’ good graces.
I believe they’ll discover out quickly sufficient that Turki and the Saudis are usually not actually into honest play and that they’ll need to put in some severe work to maintain their companies alive by this.
However they might have given up an excessive amount of floor already.
Again to the Paywalls
PBC is perhaps in a superb place, as a result of they at present have a broadcasting cope with a good American firm in Amazon. Whatever the lack of occasions final calendar 12 months, they nonetheless placed on probably the most profitable playing cards stateside. Thus far in 2025 their playing cards have been probably the most profitable stateside as properly. Which suggests they’re nonetheless tapped in with the American shopper and their model remains to be recognizable.
The humorous factor about this Turki/UFC/WWE deal is that everybody thought that every one the promoters who have been working with Riyadh Season have been onto one thing particular. Conversely, nobody is speaking about how they bought performed and suckered into permitting their fighters to struggle on a banner that was in talks to dump them proper into the Atlantic. What number of fighters does GBP, High Rank and Matchroom nonetheless have underneath contract? What number of fighters are nonetheless loyal to these firms? What number of fighters are prepared to struggle underneath these banners whereas on DAZN? These are the largest questions that the media fail to ask. As you talked about, everybody thought this was the top of PBC. Nonetheless, I even heard boxing pundits questioning why PBC hadn’t bought on board with Riyadh Season. Are you able to think about what is going on on contained in the workplaces of promoters who labored handedly with Riyadh Season? I am certain they’re scrambling to try to construct again up their US operations.
The largest clowns of this all are Canelo Alvarez and Terence Crawford. It would not matter how a lot cash they’re getting from Turki. They will look silly with Dana White holding up their palms over the subsequent two years. I would like to know whether or not or not Canelo and Crawford have been conscious of the UFC/WWE partnership. In the event that they did know, it solely makes them look extra silly.
From a perspective of branding and advertising and marketing I see an epic failure on behalf of this new boxing enterprise. When it is all mentioned and executed. We’ll return to the paywalls! I really do not see Dana White and Nick Khan resonating with the boxing group. I could not take the Riyadh Season playing cards severely, now throw UFC and WWE within the combine and it even seems to be worse!
– Na’-il Rahman
Hey Na’-il.
As I discussed above, all of those guys are grifters and don’t know find out how to deviate from their cons. A bizarre quirk within the character of a grifter, although, is that in addition they are typically suckers. Their unchecked greed typically results in them falling sufferer to different grifters. That was undoubtedly the case with, properly, nearly everybody in boxing who let themselves be groomed by Turki Alalshikh and the Saudis.
I perceive the fighters falling underneath the spell. They need to concentrate on getting as a lot cash as they’ll in as brief a time period as attainable.
However the promoters, sanctioning our bodies, and media? They’re speculated to be invested within the lengthy sport, however they turned out to be the simplest to hook.
All of the alphabets and the media needed to lose was their credibility, which was at .001 anyway. The promoters, nonetheless, may lose every thing.
As you have been saying– with whom will the fighters’ loyalties lie when the Saudis make their remaining transfer and start totally working reveals underneath their very own banner? The promoters have let Turki make direct offers with their fighters and construct a rapport. They’ve even let Turki, who has no boxing background, matchmake for his or her fighters.
There’s little question about it, they’ll lose a lot of their expertise. And good luck making an attempt to take the Saudis to court docket.
Particularly humorous/tragic/mind-boggling is Oscar De La Hoya who, as soon as once more, can have a superb chunk of his expertise pulled away from him as a result of he’s too dumb (or impaired) to know what’s taking place together with his personal enterprise. If you happen to bear in mind, simply over a decade in the past, Oscar got here to find that a lot of the expertise he had been selling by way of Golden Boy, was not truly sure to a promotional contract. That crucial error of negligence led to virtually all of his roster– together with names comparable to Errol Spence, Deontay Wilder, Danny Garcia, Keith Thurman, Adrien Broner, and Shawn Porter, amongst many others– strolling out the door to the fledgling Premier Boxing Champions for what amounted to a pennies-on-the-dollar settlement.
As for Canelo Alvarez and Terence Crawford? I don’t suppose they care about what they appear like. They needed the cash they usually bought it. However, at a time once they may’ve been true leaders within the sport and made a stand for the well-being of future generations of fighters, they selected to not.
So, if this all goes the place I consider it could possibly be headed– a Saudi-based/Dana White-led boxing monopoly with lowered UFC-style fighter pay rates– Canelo and Crawford ought to be remembered because the sell-outs they’re.
I believe you might be proper, although. Turki appears to have fumbled the ball on the three-yard line. There’s a disconnect with the best way he’s dealing with US audiences and he could very properly die on that hill with regards to his boxing ambitions. And, no, slapping Dana White’s face on the product– a man who has spent the whole thing of his UFC life belittling and demeaning the game of boxing– received’t be a constructive.
And, oh yeah, the paywalls shall be there.
It’s amusing how Turki is getting glazed by media (that he owns) and by gullible followers for decreasing the value of pay-per-views, when reveals of the same high quality was free (or a part of a minimal ESPN+ charge) earlier than Turki began gobbling up the game.
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