For the past decade or so, it’d be hard to argue that mixed martial arts (MMA) wasn’t kicking boxing’s butt when it came to making the big fights that fans wanted to see. Every month, the best fought the best on UFC pay-per-views. In boxing, things had dwindled down to a few big fights a year.
But with Saudi Arabia’s Turki Alalshikh pouring massive amounts of money into boxing, we’re seeing the biggest names regularly fighting the biggest possible opponents. U.K. superstars like Anthony Joshua are being given massive pushes in front of 98,000 fans at Wembley Stadium. And even when he loses, we’re still getting assurances that fights like Joshua vs. Fury will still happen down the road. With Turki’s growing track record, fans are willing to get invested.
Boxing is having such a moment that UFC CEO Dana White has recently declared he’s ‘in’ on the sport and will announce plans past his current investment in Irish prospect Callum Walsh. In boxing legend Teddy Atlas’ opinion, it’s a good thing.
“I say come on in, come on in! We need you,” he declared when asked by Submission Radio about White’s comments. He believes White’s participation will only fan the flames Turki Alalshikh has started in the sport.
“Turki Alalshikh has helped boxing tremendously by making fights the promoters couldn’t make,” Atlas said. “They didn’t want to make [the fights] because they didn’t own both sides, they didn’t control both sides. So the fans suffered, didn’t get the fights they wanted. The sport suffered! This sport was getting less and less relevant.”
“This sport is the longest sport in the history of sports. They find drawings of guys throwing punches on caves two thousand years ago. This sport shouldn’t be irrelevant. But it was becoming that because of the promoters with the networks, with their sugar daddies, they were just making the fights to keep their guys undefeated, to make it to the next big fight. Non-competitive fights, and once in a while they’d throw you a bone. It wasn’t enough, the fans were bothered.”
“Turki Alalshikh came along from Saudi with the money,” he continued. “In the last year he made fights the fans wanted to see, that the sport needs. Dana White does that. He’s been doing that forever over at the UFC. Yeah, I know it’s one guy in charge and people call him a dictator. But listen: if a dictator ain’t chopping heads off and he’s getting things done, sometimes maybe we could learn a little something. We could use a little direction like that right now. He’d make the fights that you’d need to make.”
“Yeah people are gonna ask ‘What are people gonna get paid?’ UFC, he created a hell of a brand, and it wasn’t a complicated formula: make the fights that people want to see, and the brand will grow because the fans will grow it. People say they don’t get paid. Listen: it is trickling down. The stars are being born, they’re making the bigger money. Same thing in boxing, but then it starts to trickle down. Yes, I want everyone paid, but when you build something, there’s more to give then. Then it will trickle down, then it will go to all the other fighters on the totem pole.”
“The bottom line is the brand will be stronger,” Atlas concluded. “The brand of boxing has become stronger because of Turki Alalshikh making these fights. It will become stronger in a more spread out way if maybe the two of them get together. If Dana White brings his model into boxing, to have the infrastructure, to have the rules, the enforcement of rules, to have the kind of fights that people want, that people have only been getting in the last year? If he brings that, and he would bring that, Teddy would say ‘Hey Dana, come on in this way. Welcome. Welcome!’”
It’s worth wondering why MMA isn’t popping off like it has in the past with White running the UFC during its most prosperous period in the company’s history. Is it really a good idea to split his attention up again so he’s not only trying to build a Power Slap empire but a boxing empire as well?
Some would say the UFC has prioritized profit over product quality for the past few years. They don’t hold fights where their stars are from, they hold fights where government tourism boards pay them to be. The biggest fighters are fighting less often than ever in order to keep costs down on quarterly spreadsheets.
The trickle that is allocated to those down the ranks isn’t high enough to attract athletes with better prospects. The next generation of talent is struggling to gain any notoriety on the cookie cutter Apex cards littering half the year’s event schedule. And White is the man to help save boxing?
Color us a bit skeptical. Right now the boxing boom is thanks to historic levels of money being shoveled into the sport. In UFC the only direction money is being shoveled under parent company Endeavor is towards stockholders.