Comments Thread For: Despite Turki Alalshikh's claim, Aug. 3 show was sellout in name only

[LarryMerchant'sBottle]

No amount of money is going to fix boxing. It's not clear to me why so many people think this is the case. Boxing is not the NBA or even the NLL (National Lacrosse League). It's no kind of league, and it never will be. It's just fighters and businessmen making money. Turki Alalshikh and the Saudi royal family can inject millions over millions of dollars into boxing cards and its not improve a thing for the sport, except for the fighters and promotional com panies involved with those specific cards. Turki Alalshikh, with all the money in the Saudi Kingdom, isn't going to organize boxing any more than it because boxing cannot be organized.

I agree with this!

With the bolded, that is..

[The Big Dunn]

No amount of money is going to fix boxing. It's not clear to me why so many people think this is the case. Boxing is not the NBA or even the NLL (National Lacrosse League). It's no kind of league, and it never will be. It's just fighters and businessmen making money. Turki Alalshikh and the Saudi royal family can inject millions over millions of dollars into boxing cards and its not improve a thing for the sport, except for the fighters and promotional com panies involved with those specific cards. Turki Alalshikh, with all the money in the Saudi Kingdom, isn't going to organize boxing any more than it because boxing cannot be organized.

I disagree. I think all he needs to do is make solid cards.

As we saw with Crawford v Spence, if you make great cards with huge fights, fans will show up and will buy the PPV’s.

It’s like the Bivol v Bieterbiev fight. That should be a semi main to a big hwt fight, like Bhop v Roy 1 was. Not a ppv headliner.

That said, I think you are correct that boxing will never occupy the place in American sporting that it used to have.

I still think Europe, Japan and Mexico it will remain big.

[QballLobo]

The rumor of the 10 million loss came from Kevin Iole and he walked it back, he said it was taken out of context. But even if it was true, why are you concerned, who cares? Turki Alashikh's has cars worth 10 million and a fund in excess of 15 billion and he's making great fights.

Just so you know, there are rumors that Canelo/Berlanga is one cherry pick too many, and it isn't selling jack shyt. You can help Canelo out by getting out the the credit card and **** out $90.00 to support that turd.

Canelo will make his big guarantees until he decides he’s done. He brings sponsors, live gates, and TV money from Mexico other fighters can’t. Every time he’s available DAZN and Haymon have no problem meeting his price.

This Turki clown just had to give away thousands of seats despite a “supercard” featuring popular local fighters. He had the top P4P fighter at the top of the card and couldn’t do 100K buys. And he still wants to disrespect Canelo who is his only hope of making money on Bud? All he is doing is making the price go up. He has lost all his leverage with that trash event he put on.

[BrankoB]

The Big Dunn wrote, "I don’t get why people are happy about this.

Crawford is inarguably one of the 3 best p4p boxers in the sport. Him headlining a card that doesn’t sell isn’t good for the sport.

Inoue only fights in Japan. The Hwt titles aren’t being defended in the US. Bivol is an unknown. Canelo only fights low level bums now.

These are the 5 best men in the sport.

Like Turkish or not, the sport is not in the best place and if he can fix things, more power to him.

I don’t get why people are happy about this.

Crawford is inarguably one of the 3 best p4p boxers in the sport. Him headlining a card that doesn’t sell isn’t good for the sport.

Inoue only fights in Japan. The Hwt titles aren’t being defended in the US. Bivol is an unknown. Canelo only fights low level bums now.

These are the 5 best men in the sport.

Like Turkish or not, the sport is not in the best place and if he can fix things, more power to him."

If your agenda is boxing, his is without question the single most important post of the day![/QUOTE]

Look I kind of largely agree with this post. I also like the cards we have been getting recently and I have enjoyed watching the match ups that Turki has been financing. I am not sure exactly what his agenda is but I know many people have speculated his ulterior motives on this forum. I appreciate what he has done so far, but my skeptical mind does not know how long he will be allowed to keep doing it.

One thing I do know - nobody has bottomless pits of money they can afford to keep throwing away forever. You cannot be overpaying these fighters forever and keep loosing millions on every major card. Why do I assume Turki is loosing money on every card? Because no other promoter is doing what he is doing. We are not hearing anything about ppv numbers being crushed and live gate being sold out at premium prices weeks ahead of the card. So if guys like uncle Bob are not doing it, it means the shows are not making money. How much are they loosing? God knows.

Whomever is financing Turki (I am assuming it is his boss) will eventually have enough of this boxing thing and will likely pull the plug on loosing money by the truck full every time an event is staged. I don't know how long is their patience, but I fear it will eventually run out and then we will be left with a whole bunch of primadona's demanding exorbitant purses that no promoter can meet.

[Sheikh]

Boxing won't be fixed until purses are cut. When that happens ticket prices will go down and pay-per-view prices will go down and there will be less stuff on Pay-per-view

[Left Hook Louie]

No amount of money is going to fix boxing. It's not clear to me why so many people think this is the case. Boxing is not the NBA or even the NLL (National Lacrosse League). It's no kind of league, and it never will be. It's just fighters and businessmen making money. Turki Alalshikh and the Saudi royal family can inject millions over millions of dollars into boxing cards and its not improve a thing for the sport, except for the fighters and promotional com panies involved with those specific cards. Turki Alalshikh, with all the money in the Saudi Kingdom, isn't going to organize boxing any more than it because boxing cannot be organized.

It's all a sportswashing effort from the Saudi "royal" family. They are doing exactly the same thing with LIV golf because they can.
They CAN'T do it with the NFL, MLB, or NBA (at least not yet) because those aren't as easily penetrated and simply bought off. But boxing is an amorphous, largely unregulated, uncoordinated, freewheeling blob that is ripe for the probing, influence-injecting Saudi entry. I have my bias as to whether this is a good or bad thing, but here I'm just explaining the phenomenon. Do we get some exciting cards out of it? Yeah, that's indisputable. Is it without question the primary motivation of the Saudi "royal court" to clean up boxing? Absolutely not.

[PBR Streetgang]

Serious question but does whether or not a card sold out or not actually matter that much to fans? That it was overpriced is a sad thing but as long as the fight occurred it means those who were willing to pay for it all got what they wanted, and those who didn't deem the ticket worthy either watched it via DAZN or some other illegal way anyway.

The only thing that might care is Crawford's ego but in the end he got the same amount of money anyway so minor details if you ask me.

It's a good question and point. Perhaps those that are legitimately concerned about the long-term viability of these cards happening would care about stuff like this.

Most of the people are just using it as a means to denigrate a fighter...all going back to arguing over who is the "A-Side" and such things that really shouldn't matter to a fan (but do matter to some). There are some on here that can rattle off PPV numbers, ticket sales, TV ratings like they were an advertisement executive.

[PBR Streetgang]

It's all a sportswashing effort from the Saudi "royal" family. They are doing exactly the same thing with LIV golf because they can.
They CAN'T do it with the NFL, MLB, or NBA (at least not yet) because those aren't as easily penetrated and simply bought off. But boxing is an amorphous, largely unregulated, uncoordinated, freewheeling blob that is ripe for the probing, influence-injecting Saudi entry. I have my bias as to whether this is a good or bad thing, but here I'm just explaining the phenomenon. Do we get some exciting cards out of it? Yeah, that's indisputable. Is it without question the primary motivation of the Saudi "royal court" to clean up boxing? Absolutely not.

Absolutely spot-on. The Saudis aren't a savior to the sport. In the short term we will have some great cards for as long as they allow Turki to indulge in his enthusiasms and as long as they see a benefit to it.

[factsarenice]

Look I kind of largely agree with this post. I also like the cards we have been getting recently and I have enjoyed watching the match ups that Turki has been financing. I am not sure exactly what his agenda is but I know many people have speculated his ulterior motives on this forum. I appreciate what he has done so far, but my skeptical mind does not know how long he will be allowed to keep doing it.

One thing I do know - nobody has bottomless pits of money they can afford to keep throwing away forever. You cannot be overpaying these fighters forever and keep loosing millions on every major card. Why do I assume Turki is loosing money on every card? Because no other promoter is doing what he is doing. We are not hearing anything about ppv numbers being crushed and live gate being sold out at premium prices weeks ahead of the card. So if guys like uncle Bob are not doing it, it means the shows are not making money. How much are they loosing? God knows.

Whomever is financing Turki (I am assuming it is his boss) will eventually have enough of this boxing thing and will likely pull the plug on loosing money by the truck full every time an event is staged. I don't know how long is their patience, but I fear it will eventually run out and then we will be left with a whole bunch of primadona's demanding exorbitant purses that no promoter can meet.

That's a good question, that deserves a real answer so bare with me.

At one point I thought Fury had no intention of fighting Usyk and Beterbiev vs Bivol was DOA... and here we are just one year later. Turki Alalshikh made the impossible possible and I'm thankful for his contribution. That said, nothing lasts forever.

As for what happens next, that depends on what changes are made to fix the long time, corrupt, broken sport of boxing. If structural changes are not made, fighters that want to be great will fight for market value and those that don't will leave. The REAL PROBLEM is not some fighter pushing their market value but the naked market manipulation, and if that isn't addressed it won't matter, boxing will morph into BS reality TV.


There will always be Prima Donnas that come in two types. They may appear to be similar but when they clash their responses are diametrically opposite. One type is the entitled Prima Donna that believes in their immortal supremacy, they existed before Turki Alalshikh and will be here long after. The fake is the Prima Donna/ entertainer that doesn't fight for supremacy but for the appearance of supremacy. The entertainer will talk supremacy laced with silly excuses and almost always pricing themselves out of any fight that might pose a risk to their long-term financial goals. The entertainer class will game the system to the detriment of the sport and with the help of promoters, managers and sanctioning bodies they continue to get away with things that nobody else can. Rules don't apply to the entertainer, judging is compromised, drug use is tolerated, and networks don't care as long as the entertainer pays. They’ve turned boxing into a fake sport with rules they manipulate to maximize profit.

Without structural change.... Turki Alalshikh will leave, fights like Fury/Usyk will cease to exist and we'll go right back to the force-field of excuses, unfair treatment, predictable out comes, and fights that never happen but none of it will mater if boxing continues to morph into BS reality TV.

[factsarenice]

Absolutely spot-on. The Saudis aren't a savior to the sport. In the short term we will have some great cards for as long as they allow Turki to indulge in his enthusiasms and as long as they see a benefit to it.

So far Boxing is befitting and so is everyone that truly loves the sport. The status quo are making money but they aren't happy so they shake his hand and behind closed doors instigate push back because what they fear most is the possibility of change, of losing their iron grip of corruption on the sport. But fear not, eventually all things end and when Turki leaves we can get back to matches that are 95 % predictable... like the Kardashians.