Making boxing a dictatorship would be bad, actually

Latching onto Turki Alalshikh as the cure to boxing’s ills will not end well

Last Saturday’s Riyadh Season show in Los Angeles was, on the whole, a decent card. Andy Cruz delivered, Bakole vs Anderson was what promoters want us to think all heavyweight fights are like, and the main event turned out to be a very competitive and tactical clash of high-level fighters.

That said, the moment that most stood out to me was Todd Grisham and Sergio Mora falling over themselves to extol the virtues of Turki Alalshikh taking over the sport. Admittedly, Todd and Sergio tend to be the lowlights of any broadcast regardless of what they actually say, but this was particularly egregious.

There is and always has been plenty of appeal in the concept of a benevolent dictator; it’s the average person’s knee-jerk answer to the question of “what would be the best form of government.” What’s not to like about a learned autocrat doing what’s right and logical without the need for bureaucracy and red tape?

Thing is, that’s a fantasy. Always has been. Speaking as a recovering UFC fan, you do not want this sport to move at the whim of an untouchable god-king.

To be clear, I’m not saying the act of using personal wealth to reward fighters for risky matchups is bad. Having that much money at all is unethical in my book, but you can bet that if I had billions of dollars I’d spend my first day arranging Bam vs Junto at the BLH Ultradome. For the co-feature, I’d create an offshoot of karate tile breaking where a bunch of club-level heavyweights line up in single file to see how many Deontay Wilder could simultaneously knock out with a single punch.

Everything else is a red flag. For one, we already have cautionary tales on the dangers of boxing autocracy: the sanctioning bodies, or at the very least the WBA and WBC. Mauricio Sulaiman’s racket has written clauses in its rules that amount to “these only apply when we feel like it,” which is why some WBC champions get stripped for catching COVID and others require three years of inactivity and a DWI to lose their belts.

If you broaden the lens to combat sports in general, just look at the UFC. With guaranteed money via their ESPN deal, the promotion has more or less given up on even pretending to make an effort. Serghei Spivac rolled over and died against Ciryl Gane last September and got rewarded with a third consecutive main event this coming Saturday, while flyweight Nate Maness got booted from the promotion for “not being exciting” despite going 5-2 with three post-fight bonuses. The heavyweight division is stuck in the mud because s*ithead-in-chief Dana White insists on giving a title shot to Stipe Miocic, who’s coming up on four years without a win.

Two things could prevent similar shenanigans in the Turki Era. One is meaningful competition or some other means of keeping him in check, but I’m not holding my breath. Never before have I witnessed such shameless ass-kissing from everyone without the money to tell Turki to shove it, from fighters to commentators to aforementioned turds like Sulaiman.

The other is Alalshikh breaking the mold by not being a thin-skinned, self-aggrandizing, insecure weirdo. Also unlikely, as evidenced by his Reddit-ass response to Canelo brushing him off and, you know, the general ludicrous pageantry that goes on between fights on his cards. Nobody who makes you call him His Excellency should be trusted as far as you can throw him.

Don’t expect some hypothetical successor to be any different, either; in my experience, those traits are endemic to anyone above a certain tax bracket.

I won’t deny that he’s given us some very good fights, but the first hit’s always free. This is neither moral nor healthy for the sport in the long term.