Wrap-Up: Alalshikh and White make their move, Netflix in boxing, more

Turki Alalshikh and Dana White are heading up a huge new venture in boxing, but will it make the impact they want? Plus much more!

Turki Alalshikh and TKO Group launching new boxing promotional league

Turki Alalshikh and TKO Group — the parent company of both UFC and WWE — announced their plan for a brand new boxing “league” this past week, easily the biggest story of the last seven days with the most potential and massive long-term impact.

To me, this has felt inevitable. The rumblings had been out there already, all of it easy to see coming with Alalshikh’s obvious interest in boxing, plus Riyadh Season working with UFC and WWE both on events quite regularly. Without this partnership, Alalshikh has already dramatically changed the boxing landscape, in and out of Saudi Arabia, and while the belief that it’s sportswashing is pretty prevalent — and it times, quite obvious — for the base boxing fan who really just doesn’t care either way about that, it has been an improvement pretty much across the board.

Fans have gotten fights they wanted to see, as it all has always truly come down to simple economics, and Alalshikh and Riyadh Season have money to burn on making any fight under the sun, a level of money that promoters like Eddie Hearn, Bob Arum, Frank Warren, and Oscar De La Hoya — plus whatever you are legally supposed to call Al Haymon while pretending Tom Brown is making PBC cards happen — simply couldn’t reasonably risk on almost any fight.

How long can that last? A long time. The Saudis have unfathomable money. They have not been playing the same game boxing promoters have always played, and the results have been clear. Huge events, albeit largely in lifeless Riyadh arenas, have been normal under Alalshikh.

The partnership with TKO puts both UFC’s Dana White and WWE executive Nick Khan directly into the boxing mix. White has long boasted about how he can totally fix boxing but also never actually made the step to do it, despite saying he was going to repeatedly, with the excuse that it was too broken. Even he, the genius, couldn’t really fix boxing, he finally concluded. There are several ways to look at this, and Patrick Stumberg has already warned boxing fans who may not know White’s history about, well, White’s history.

My gut feeling is that White is there mainly as a figurehead, a guy who’s had exceptional PR for many years, largely driven by his own desire to put himself front and center for UFC’s successes and growth. He is a name and face that a lot of combat fans trust — the type of fans who don’t post on web sites, and make up the vast majority of the audience. He is trusted because UFC has grown by leaps and bounds during his tenure, for better or worse on the end product, and because he is seen as someone who has succeeded far more than failed. There are zero boxing promoters who could fit that role. None of them are trusted more than not.

I’m not saying Dana White won’t have an active role, but end of the day, it’s going to come down to Turki Alalshikh’s decisions and money. As for Nick Khan, he’s a savvy, well-connected businessman who rapidly scaled the WWE corporate ladder with very little wider public attention; don’t expect to see him doing interviews all over YouTube, but he will do his job, whatever that winds up really being.

This could fail, and some believe it will, in part because they’ve seen various other Big Ideas come and go, or never come near the impact that they set out to make, most notably Haymon’s PBC, which settled in very quickly as kinda being just another boxing outfit with all the same problems as normal.

Myself, I stress that (1) Alalshikh has already been making drastic changes to boxing, and (2) they have a level of money to invest in their idea that nobody else in this sport has ever even dreamed possible. This is a new game.

Here’s what some of our readers are thinking:

White has said that he does not want to see the new league mix with UFC and send MMA fighters into the boxing ring and boxers into the Octagon, so if you’re concerned about this company giving you more terrible boxer vs MMA fighter boxing matches, it sounds — sounds! — like that is not in their plans. And all things being fair, Dana did get me with this one:

“You won’t have one fight and then a podcast happens, and then another fight happens 45 minutes later and you see four fights in six hours. All of that stuff is going to change when we start running the show.”

We’ve all had this complaint about boxing broadcsts for years, and the most recent Riyadh Season show (Beterbiev vs Bivol 2) already showcased Turki moving in this direction, production-wise, and it was incredibly welcome.

Netflix as potential power player in boxing

Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano will meet again on Friday, July 11, headlining a Netflix-streamed Most Valuable Promotions show from Madison Square Garden, the site of their first bout.

Taylor and Serrano simply remain the biggest fight for one another, by far, and frankly that would probably remain true even if Taylor officially goes to 3-0 against Serrano and they wanted to do it a fourth time. (Not saying that would happen, because Katie’s going to retire sooner than later, but what other fight could either of them do that would really match even a limited appeal fourth fight against one another? Not much, being honest.)

Netflix is also rumored to be the home of what will officially be the first Turki/TKO boxing show, which is expected to be the Canelo vs Crawford fight in September. If Netflix becomes the official partner for that venture, it could absolutely crush DAZN’s presence in the sport beyond smaller cards (which I don’t think many boxing fans would shed tears over), and you have to remember that Netflix already paid a ton of money to be the home of WWE’s long-running flagship weekly show, Raw, and that they’re considered strong contenders to land UFC, too, once UFC’s ESPN deal is up.

Along with pretty much every other streaming TV service, Netflix is looking to invest in live sports (I know WWE’s not a sport, but TV-wise, that’s how it’s categorized, because as programming it operates along the same lines). Even if ratings dip or whatever, it remains the most valuable thing in television, basically.

So that Netflix subscription you have might soon enough be a lot more valuable to you if you’re a combat sports fan.

More from this week:

• Riyadh Season and The Ring — which is supposedly still a journalistic outlet but, well, I watched that presser, and I just don’t think you can see it that way at all anymore — had a kickoff presser for their May 2 card this week. We got quotes from Ryan Garcia, Rolly Romero, Devin Haney, Jose Ramirez, Teofimo Lopez, and Arnold Barboza Jr, but the real highlight was in Teofimo and Ryan Garcia going at each other a bit. That fight might wind up being more appealing than running back Garcia vs Haney later this year, at least if both Ryan and Teofimo win in May.
• Gervonta “Tank” Davis had a sort of bizarre interpretation of how the scores came to be what they were in his draw with Lamont Roach. Roach’s thinking aligns more closely with that of most people. Tank is hoping to do the rematch soon, and has even suggested it could happen “end of May.”
• Naoya Inoue now looks likely to face Ramon Cardenas on May 4, wrapping up that huge weekend of boxing on a Sunday in Vegas, and then it’ll be Murodjon Akhmadaliev in September, just as I’d expected would be the case, what with me being a genius and not just betting on the most likely outcome and all.
• The weekend’s most notable action saw Lauren Price utterly dominated Natasha Jonas to unify three welterweight title belts. If you haven’t yet watched Lauren Price, she is the real deal. Nine fights in and she’s looking like the clear best welterweight in the sport, and that’s not a division in women’s boxing that lacks some talented fighters, including Jonas. Price just outclassed her. Would love to see Price go for undisputed against the Mayer-Ryan 2 winner, which should line up since they’re fighting on March 29. Caroline Dubois survived a late scar against Bo Mi Re Shin to retain her WBC lightweight belt on the undercard, plus Karriss Artingstall looked really sharp returning against Raven Chapman after a lengthy layoff.

• The aforementioned Amanda Serrano signed a lifetime deal with Most Valuable Promotions, which is a neat press release to put out. I mean, if the company were to fold or Jake Paul loses interest in all of this — more likely with the Turki Takeover gaining steam — then, you know, the contract will mean nothing. But, again, a nice press release and idea. I do think they, like, mean it and stuff. All their appreciation for her and hers for them.
• Eddie Hearn says he’s not too bothered about the new TurkiKO project, but then Eddie Hearn says a lot of things. It will obviously alter everything he’s been doing for years, including the last couple where he’s been basically attached to Alalshikh’s hip.
• Martin Bakole will still get his previously planned fight with Efe Ajagba, and it will happen May 3 on the Canelo vs Scull undercard. That was what Bakole had up next before he stepped in on very short notice, totally out of shape, and got knocked out in two by Joseph Parker late last month. It’s nice that Bakole is still getting that fight, because I don’t think his status should be punished much for losing in that situation against a good fighter, but you do have to wonder if turning it around that quickly after that fight is a good idea. Ajagba’s no elite, but he’s no scrub, either.
• The WBA isn’t going to make Oleksandr Usyk fight anyone any time soon, which also means that 615-year-old Kubrat Pulev will have to actually defend that fake WBA belt he won from Mahmoud Charr, and he’s been ordered to face Fabio Wardley.
• Staying with the heavyweights: Johnny Fisher and David Allen will fight again on May 17, running back that terrible decision that robbed Allen of a deserved win last December.

• Terri Harper will defend her WBO lightweight title against Natalie Zimmerman on May 23, headlining a Matchroom card from her hometown of Doncaster. The show will also feature Maxi Hughes vs Archie Sharp, among other bouts. Very nice for Harper to get to main event at Eco-Power Stadium (formerly Keepmoat Stadium), home of Doncaster Rovers, a club I locked horns with many times over the years on FIFA games.