Turki acts like a toddler lol. I really don't want him in charge of the sport, its rankings, or its history. BoxRec, for all its faults, is still the best record-keeper we have for this sport, it's an excellent historical tool for the average fan and keeps up to date with upcoming fights which aren't well publicised. I like the cards he puts together but I don't want a childish megalomaniac who spends loads of his time on Reddit to be the boxing Tsar.
If having a regular champion wasn't bad enough, the WBA decided to also have an interim champion to decide who will contest for the regular title. Absolute joke lol
One creepy dude in Saudi Arabia Arabia trying to have a monopoly on the sport isn't good no matter which way u swing it .. that's what he's ultimately after.. he's also openly favouring certain Fighters like Crawford over Inoue & he shouldn't be doing that he should be fairly neutral
If the obnoxious, unathletic, uncharismatic boxing neophite Turki Alalshikh continues to attempt to establish a dictatorship over boxing in such a manner, I might just disappear in the VPN world of asian boxing. Saudi already commited crimes against boxing when they allowed Ziyad Almaayouf to display the miserable mockery of a crossguard against Michał Bulik.
Any WBA holder and for many years it was the dominant belt, looks like a contender in boxrec now. Not even an acknowledgement. If I was studying boxing now and I wanted to look into Pedroza, it just looks so much worse.
BoxRec is a great resource for looking at fighters' records. What's the alternative? Wikipedia only has famous guys.
I don't really care which fights the Saudi dosh has helped to make, ultimately Turki's influence over the sport will prove pernicious and I salute anyone who has the fortitude to stand up to him (even Canelo)
Turki doesn't actually care about Boxing. He's a patsy who's focused on increasing Saudi cultural outreach and global soft power through control of sport. The overall goal is political and beyond Boxing. Over the next few years, expect fighters who blatantly rep Saudi to get the most opportunities, fudged rankings etc. In terms of boxing, it's good for fans in the short term as elites will fight each other. However, it will be awful for prospects if Saudi influence continues to increase. It's giving shades of the IBC in the 40s and 50s to be honest.
In my honest opinion both boxrec and the wba are corrupt. Boxing in general is corrupt so this is just to be expected. These things that are part of the problem are usually part of the solution also so who cares, boxrec wouldn't be any worse if it just disassociated itself from all the organizations and neither would boxing.
They should have just stopped recognizing the WBA, and not memory holed it. That was the smart and right thing to do.