BN weekly columnist Joe Hughes calls ‘Tank’ up and warns that all that glitters in boxing is not really gold.
There were reports this week of a potential takeover of the world’s biggest boxing promotions by representatives of Saudi Arabia. This could change the sport dramatically, hopefully for the better.
Creating a ‘World Boxing League’ has been talked about before but never as realistically as it could be now. Many high-profile promoters, all of whom have their own individual contracts with boxers, managers, sponsors, TV companies, etc. they make it very difficult to put together one big fight, especially if it involves two boxers from rival promotions, let them. only the number of fighters are now being talked about being grouped together.
However, there has never been an interest group with anything close to the kind of financial support of Saudi representative Turki Alashikh. It’s quite possible that he can buy out all other promotions, or at least said promotion’s contracts, giving him control over the careers of the biggest names in the sport.
Turki Al-Sheikh (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
It could open the door to larger wars and increase the frequency of such events. It can also hurt sports in unexpected ways. Competition often breeds success and the promotion of high-level boxing to a regular one-horse race can backfire after the initial excitement of the big fights. We may be entering uncharted waters in boxing.
One of the biggest stars that could be lured by Saudi money to take the fights we want to see, will compete this weekend. Gervonta Davis is arguably one of the best fighters in the world, maybe even one of the best fighters in the world, pound for pound. However, he has not proved it.
His career was cut short after being thrown down by the rivals he faced. This weekend, he will face Frank Martin in what should be a good fight but there are plenty of other interesting matches he could be involved in. Shakur Stevenson, Vasyl Lomachenko and William Zepeda are just a few of the lightweights who could be better.
In the past, he has been seen fired from Teofimo Lopez, Devin Haney and the aforementioned Lomachenko, just to name a few. He might be the best of them all, as shown by his big win, a one-sided knockout of Ryan Garcia. But you need to prove yourself in the ring by beating the best fighters in the world.
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