the Saudi-TKO plan to dominate boxing by Thomas Hauser

Good thing is this will never work. The IBC with Norris tried back in the day with the backing of the entire mob, actual high level political connections and straightforward violence and it still failed. Saudi as a whole will pull out of Boxing once their sport washing goals are complete. This seems more like a looming individual failure for Turki only than anything else.

 

For me the difference is the level of cunning. Turki on his own seems a bit foolish - he constantly creates money sinks with his events and doesn't really seem to understand Boxing well as a sport or an overall business entity. Without that initial Saudi state backing he wouldn't even be near the sport. Then there's Dana who nowadays just does not seem to give a ****.

I think the decentralised global nature of modern boxing will really help here. Even if TKO somehow took hold in North America for example, no Asian boxer would sign with them over somewhere like Teiken who hold massive sway in the huge eastern market. Turki will never gain the control over the sport that he wants, especially when boxers know the potential mega purses that can be acquired in the traditional way.

Also fair play for calling out this ****. Most of the pleb fans have just been saying, "Muh heavies! Love you Turki!" They dont giving a **** about how it affects the sport or the political agenda. Of course in a few years if Turki had his way they'd be complaining again as boxing fans usually do

 

I dont think the Saudi´s will even achieve their goals with boxing, which is to get butts in Saudi seats. The only ones who will make such travels are the Brits.
They might as well buy up every British title fight instead of paying tens of millions for Canelo to fight Crawford in the US. I honestly think it would yield better results for them, and result in the desired tourism.
They should go after the EBU and British title fights, and those fighters.

 

Also, if Turki goes extreme and tries holding the ring belt hostage, only letting people who are aligned to TKO compete for it (which seems to be his long term plan), then people will just create a new non-TKO belt. Stuff like this has been done before in boxing history. At that point it would become incestual and no-one would consider TKO competitors the best in the world.

 

Honestly, Saudi just seems to be failing at the first point everywhere. Even in the footie (soccer) there are players who signed to Saudi taking paycuts so they can compete in more respected leagues again. No one gives a **** about them tbh.