The Saudis Fixed Boxing. Now They’re Trying to Break It.

In the period between about 2010 - 2022, these were the positive things you could say about high level-boxing:

 

1.        The fighters got paid well

 

End.

 

These were the negative things you could say about boxing over that period:

 

1.        The best fighters were inactive

2.        The best never fought the best

3.        The sanctioning bodies made it impossible to make fights

 

Basically, other than a few classics like Fury v Wilder 1, you mostly got stinkers and non-competitive fights between a star and a non-star.

 

Even a fight like Canelo v GGG 1, which was a great fight, should have taken place two years earlier than it did but for Canelo ducking Golovkin.

 

It was bleak.

 

It started to improve in about 2022 as the financial pressures of COVID started forcing fighters to take risky fights for big paydays. In that year, Devin Haney and Canelo Alvarez both became undisputed.

 

In late 2022 and into 2023, Saudi Arabia came and supercharged the sport.

 

They had the financial wherewithal to cut through boxing’s politics and basically make everyone so rich that nothing mattered.

 

As a result, they made the following fights:

 

1.        Usyk v Joshua, twice

2.        Fury v Usyk, twice

3.        Bivol v Beterbiev, twice

4.        Joshua v Dubois

 

We also, at least partly because of the pressure exerted by Saudi Arabia making the best fight the best, got these long-awaited fights:

 

1.        Davis v Garcia

2.        Haney v Lomachenko

3.        Spence v Crawford

4.        Haney v Garcia

That attitude has stretched into 2025 with fights like Canelo v Crawford and a card featuring each of Teofimo Lopez, Devin Haney, and Ryan Garcia already booked shortly after the best card of boxing I can remember in February.

What does it all mean? The fighters themselves were still getting paid extremely well to make these fights, but all of the problems with boxing have been solved.

 

The best are fighting the best.

 

The best are active.

 

The sanctioning bodies have got out of the way.

 

Everyone is getting paid.

 

We all know that the Saudi gravy train will come to an end at some point, like every other despotic regime that has popped into boxing, but at least for now they have fixed the sport.

 

Why do they want to break it?

 

TKO, the publicly traded parent company of the WWE and UFC, has announced that it is entering the boxing space with Saudi Arabia.

Basically the Saudis are the money but TKO and Dana White control the operation. They want to make it UFC: Boxing Edition.

 

Dana has spent the last couple of days going on tour and telling everyone that will listen that he is the man to save boxing by making the best fight the best, making the best fight often, and getting the sanctioning bodies out of the way so there’s just him.

 

Brother you’re too late. The guy standing next to you already did that.

 

Generally, more content in boxing is a good thing.

 

Maybe it will be.

But given Dana White and the UFC infrastructure’s involvement, I have my doubts.

 

The UFC is famous for underpaying fighters. In February of this year, the UFC was forced to pay $375m USD to a class of fighters for violating US antitrust provisions i.e. the UFC acted like a Monopoly. 

 

In the lawsuit, UFC legends told the court they couldn’t pay for their medical care without money from the settlement because the UFC’s wages are so poor and there is no insurance once a fighter is done fighting.

 

The UFC also doesn’t allow fighters to get personal sponsors, nor do they share the revenue from UFC sponsors with the fighters which further depressed fighter pay.

 

The underpayment is by design, and they want to bring it into boxing.

 

Ari Emmanuel, the CEO of TKO, has already talked about how the Ali Act has “hurt boxing”.

 

The Ali Act is an Act of U.S. Congress that exists to protect the welfare of boxers by ensuring that the books of an event are open to a fighter, as well as other welfare protections.

 

The UFC does not have transparent books. They don’t tell us what fighters make publicly, and fighters don’t know what everyone else, including the company, is making.

 

The only reason we know what the UFC pays its fighters as a percentage of revenue is because, when they were sold to Endeavour in 2016, part of the pitch that justified a $4b price tag was that the UFC will never pay its fighters more than 20% of revenue.

 

I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but Dana White has some pals in the White House. It wouldn’t shock me if his entrance into boxing marks the exit of the Ali Act and the end of Congressionally enshrined protections for boxers.

 

So, if it’s an attempt to take over boxing and basically do a UFC: Boxing Edition then it’s bad news for boxing and boxers.

 

If it’s intended to be a prospect showcase like the old Friday Night Fights then that carries its own problems. 

 

The UFC is famous for long contracts. For example. at 35 Jon Jones signed an 8-fight contract with the UFC. He will never fight out that contract, but the UFC will own him long into his retirement.

 

If they have those sorts of contracts with prospects in what is meant to be a showcase type of promotion before they head into the big-time, that will cause stagnation in the sport, particularly if they don’t have any step-up fights for their prospects.

 

Unless there’s a Vito Corleone around to ensure Dana that either his brains or his signature will be on the fighter’s release, we’d be back to the same problems we had before. 

 

We would again have promotional issues stopping the best from fighting the best, probably leading to inactivity, and another fracturing of the sport.

Except now, elite boxers would be hundred-thousandairs rather than millionaires.

 

When Saudi Arabia entered boxing, they seemed to fix it.

 

Now they’re making a more formal entry with Dana White and they want to break what they already fixed.