Erik Magraken is a Canadian combat sports lawyer and commentator who follows the business of combat sports closely, and has been awaiting the developments around the Ali Act.

A bill proposing changes to the Act recently became public and has been labelled the Ali Revival Act.

Some of the language is confusing, and some are desperate for you to hear about some of the benefits – like minimum wage for boxers per round, and improved drugs and medical testing. But what does it all actually mean? Is there a downside? Is this not what boxing has always needed?

Magraken answers some of the questions that have inevitably followed, and explains some of the details that had remained unclear.

We knew this was coming and now the bill is out there in the open. Could it change the face of boxing?

Erik Magraken: Absolutely. And change the face of boxing in a way that it’s going to strip the rights of boxers. So the Ali Act, introduced a good 25 years ago, was brought in because boxers were being exploited financially through promoter practices. And this bill basically says, “Hey, a new type of promoter could be created that doesn’t have to comply with the Ali Act so long as they do certain things”.

So that’s terrible for boxers and boxers need to pay attention to this because their rights are under jeopardy right now. And this bill could set back the rights of boxers decades if it passes.

Do you feel that they will pay attention to it? Or do you think that some people are chasing short-term money without looking at the longer-term picture?

I hope boxers will pay attention is the best thing I can say.

I don’t want to be negative. The one thing that’s difficult is boxers, unlike a lot of other organized sports, don’t have a union. There’s not a centralized place where a body of boxers are together and they could respond in a collective way.

But the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association, the MMAFA – even though MMA is not boxing – the MMAFA has been organized for well over a decade, and they’ve been pushing to reform the Ali Act to expand it to all prizefighters. It makes no sense that boxers have certain rights, but other prizefighters – be it kickboxers, Muay Thai, mixed martial artists – can be exploited in a way that boxers can’t be exploited. And so they’ve been pushing for years and years for the Ali Act to be expanded.

And they’re also pushing for the Ali Act to be protected. So boxers’ rights shouldn’t be stripped away. And if I was a professional boxer, or if I was a high caliber amateur boxer, thinking of turning professional and concerned that my rights were going to be stripped, I would go to the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association.

I would organize with them collectively to make sure your voice is heard, because this law shouldn’t be passed to simply look after a promoter’s financial interest. If you’re a congressperson and you’re going to vote on this, you want to make sure it’s good for the industry. You want to make sure it’s good for the health of the sport.

And I can’t think of any world in which boxers’ voices shouldn’t be heard. And I’d encourage boxers to reach out to the MMAFA to make sure that their concerns are heard.

When you talk about the sort of internal support of unions, what do you think about the ABC’s [Association of Boxing Commissions] stance on this?

I’m concerned about the ABC stance. And I’ll tell you why. A few years ago, and this is something I’m proud of, we – me, Carla Duran, Rose Gracie – we asked the ABC to create a fighters’ committee, an athletes’ committee.

It made no sense to me that all these regulators get together and they make decisions about boxing and MMA, and they don't have a formal way to reach out to fighters. And they listened to us. And they created something called the Athletes’ Voice Committee.

And they appointed several people from different sports – MMA, boxing, officials, regulators, a whole bunch of people were put on this Athletes’ Voice Committee to make sure that athletes had an avenue to be consulted when important legal developments were arising. The Athletes’ Voice Committee was not consulted by the ABC. The ABC – I think they spoke on behalf of their board.

This is just in the press releases or the articles I read, but they basically said that the ABC, their board, unanimously supports this legislation. Those articles came out before the legislation was even public. I’ve got the bill here that just came out this week.

But before this bill was published by congress, there were articles saying that the ABC’s board unanimously supported it, which means the ABC’s board saw this before the public saw it. And the Athletes’ Voice Committee never saw it. The Athletes’ Voice Committee asked the ABC to share this with them to keep them in the loop.

The Athletes’ Voice Committee was told that they would be kept in the loop and they weren’t kept in the loop. Just like a Congress person, why would you vote yes for this or no for this if you haven’t consulted with the athletes, which the Ali Act was designed to protect athletes? So why wouldn’t you listen to athletes before changing the Ali Act? And if you’re a regulator, you’re there to protect athletes, right? Combat sports are regulated to protect athletes from exploitation and to have certain health and safety standards in place.

Why wouldn’t you talk to athletes? And if you’re the ABC and you created an athletes’ committee, and that athletes’ committee wants to know what’s going on, why wouldn’t you loop them into the conversation? So I don’t know why the ABC board unanimously is supporting this. And I’ve heard from some state athletic commissions – I’ve talked to a few commissioners, and they tell me they were not kept in the loop. So when the board says they unanimously support it, that doesn’t mean that all of the state commissions support this.

A lot of the state commissions, from what I can tell, had never seen this bill before the ABC board was saying they approve it. So I’m not sure what’s going on over there. But I think there’s a lot of scrutiny that’s required moving forward.

But people have said for the longest time that boxing is broken; it needs an overhaul. That we could do with one set of rankings and one champion for each weight class. Is this not a step closer to what boxing needs?

Well, if that’s the concern somebody has – we have too many championships – this is creating more championships. This doesn’t fix that at all.

This is adding another belt or endless other belts. So if you’re cynical, you could look at this bill and say this is designed to let the UFC get into boxing. But you can’t write a law that says this only applies to the UFC, so anybody that complies with the law can do it.

So at a bare minimum, if this law passes, you end up having the UFC or TKO or Zuffa Boxing or whatever they’re going to call themselves – you can have this new promotion, and they have the right under this law to create their own belt, their own title. And they have the right to decide the rankings.

And they have the right to decide who fights for that belt. And that’s separate from all the ABC alphabet belts that exist right now. So if somebody’s saying, “Hey, there’s too, too much going on in boxing, too many belts” – this is giving more belts.

So I don’t see how that addresses that concern. This adds to that concern. And by the way, beyond TKO Boxing, or Zuffa Boxing, you can have 100 other promoters come in and create their own belts. So it just completely waters down that landscape. And then I say, “Okay, is it designed to let one entity basically monopolize boxing?” And so there’s really only going to be one belt because they monopolize boxing? Well, that’s not healthy for the sport or for boxers.

Or is it designed to have a whole lot of competition with a whole bunch of new competing promoters with their own belts that really, really, really waters down the title picture? So I’m not sure people that say that have a persuasive argument.

You are approaching it with a critical eye, but do you see anything that suggests this could work out? Do you see an end game where this can make positive changes? We’ve seen things about different pay structures; $150 minimum for rounds; they’re saying more safety steps; things that have been discussed in the past… But, also, is that going to be really difficult for the smaller promoters to pay to cover? 

Yeah – two things.

One, there’s something positive in this bill. And that’s what's being presented to the public. But that’s the distraction, not the main story.

The main story is this punches at the heart of the Ali Act protections. That’s what this bill really does. That’s what it is.

But on the fringes, there’s some minimum things that are good – minimum pay, and minimum insurance requirements. And so obviously, having minimum pay for pro boxers, so you get $150 a round instead of some promoters paying boxers $1 per fight. You can’t do that nonsense.

So sure, there’s a minimum protection and there’s a minimum insurance that boxers are going to get under this. Nobody’s saying that's bad. Not one critic of this bill is saying, “Please don’t give boxers those protections”.

The criticism is why are you creating a new – I’ll call it a super promoter. This new breed of promoter that doesn’t have to comply with the Ali Act. That’s where the criticism is. But on the second point, when you create these minimum requirements, what that’s going to do – this is not criticizing minimum requirements. This is just the practical result of it – you’re going to kill some club shows. You’re going to have some club, low-level boxing shows that won’t be able to afford to comply with this. And so you’re going to have a concentration of power; you’re going to have fewer lower-level promoters.

And what that’ll do in the long term, the concentration of power, I guess, is never good because it leads towards the potential for monopolization of the sport. And so there’s a concern there.

This act and the changes, though, make no difference in world boxing. It’s clearly a huge issue for boxing in North America, but it doesn’t apply worldwide, right?

Yeah, we’ll have to see if this passes. We’ll have to see which fighters go along with this new promotional entity and what the sort of end game is of that. But you’re right. Boxing is a global sport and boxing has a rich history and tradition around different pockets of the world.

And so the United States is not the be all and end all, but it’s an extraordinarily important market. And having monopolization in that extraordinarily important market is a bad thing for the overall health of professional boxing. And so, again, we have to see if this bill actually passes, because I think there’s a handful of concerns with it.

I think there’s going to be pushback on this bill. I think any congressperson that looks at it critically and listens to the concerns that boxers are raising will have some pause about whether voting to support it. But if it passes, I don’t think it’s going to do anything good for the long-term health of boxing in the United States.

And if you harm the health of boxing in the United States, I don’t know what that does on the global stage. But I just don’t see any positives from this bill in the long run. That’s my take.

Do you think the people in power at government-level are strong enough to push back, because when you look at the people involved, they were close to Donald Trump’s push for presidency. It seems like they’re going to be very brave and have to make their voices very loud. Are people are invested enough to do that? 

Boy, the US political scene – I’m in Canada, by the way – but the US political scene from the outside looking in is incredibly wild and tough to predict. Like it’s just from week to week. I don’t know what is going on there or what’s going to happen.

I think there’s a lot of chaos in terms of whether the current folks in power are going to stay on the same page. I don’t know. I don’t know if this is important to enough people in congress right now to take a hard stand one way or the other.

What I do know is it will impact current professional boxers. It will impact future professional boxers and those individuals really ought to review this, understand it, and if they’re concerned about it, organize and make sure their voice is heard. And I can’t think of a better forum to do that than reaching out to the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association.

People have said that the Ali Act, as well-intentioned as it was, has been somewhat toothless in terms of enforcing certain issues. You must have heard that criticism over the years.

Yeah, I hate that criticism for a few reasons.

So first, if you say the Ali Act is entirely useless, it doesn’t do anything, – well, why are you changing it, right? Like why does it need to be changed if it doesn’t achieve anything? Like it’s a non-problem, right? People are saying it’s nothing; doesn't do anything. Well, why are you changing it to not make it more toothsome? You’re not giving people more rights here.

So that argument falls on deaf ears. But here’s the other thing – it’s not toothless.

When people say it’s toothless, or it’s never enforced, it means the government never enforces it. You don’t get state attorney generals prosecuting people under the Ali Act. That’s true.

But boxers have a private right of action. So boxers, if they say, “Hey, you guys aren’t complying with the Ali Act”, they could sue. And there’s been many, many, many boxers that use those rights.

And they’ve sued promoters, or they’ve sued sanctioning bodies. They’ve sued people for not following the Ali Act. And there’s settlements, right? That forces people that are abusing boxer rights to then do things right.

So you can’t ignore a boxer who earns a legitimate title shot. You can’t not give them a title shot. You can’t force a boxer to sign a long-term exploitative contract to get that title shot.

There’s real rights. If you’re the headlining boxer, you can’t keep the revenue secret from that boxer. The boxer gets to find out how much money is actually being made.

Maybe they signed a terrible contract, and they’re stuck with it, but then they find out how much money was made. Guess what? They’re going to have an informed negotiation for their next contract. And if a boxer is not being shared that information, they could sue to get that information. So it’s not toothless at all. It’s got meaningful, meaningful remedies for boxers. So those arguments are distracting and incorrect soundbites.

How concerned would you be with what you've seen if you were heading up the IBF, the WBO, the WBA and the WBC?

If I was one of them, I’d be concerned. I think they’re being threatened.

If we could just speculate as to what’s going to happen. Let’s say the UFC gets into boxing, which they are; they have a massive war chest; they’ve got a massive influential relationship with media; their own and others. And think of it as a slow burn over a number of years – let’s hypothesize that a lot of club level shows dry up, don’t exist. Let’s hypothesize that the UFC finds a way to have the remaining shows feed into their new boxing venture, like they do in MMA, they’ve got something called the contender series, which basically takes the champions from the regional scene, gives them a shot and locks them into the contract structure.

So they’ve got it sort of tied up from top to bottom. Well, let’s say that’s the game plan. And over the years, they start doing this with professional boxing.

And then to the public, it’s sold that their belt is the belt that matters. If you’re one of these other sanctioning bodies, the public might not think your belt matters all that much. And there would be concerns.

So I’m curious what those sanctioning bodies have to say whether they support this; whether they don’t; whether they think it’s good for the sport; whether not. I’m curious for their public comments on it.

Could boxing instead go in a completely different route where the traditional side of boxing stays the same with the four governing bodies, and this new brand is created, and it’s either a dominant or a challenger brand?

I always say this – I just can’t predict the future. I don’t know what it looks like in the long run.

If you followed the UFC antitrust lawsuit, their argument was, the plaintiffs would say, “Hey, you guys are an unlawful monopoly, you’re abusing your power, and it’s hurting us in the market”.

That’s an oversimplification but that’s what the case is. The UFC said, “You’ve got nothing to sue us for. We’re not an abusive monopoly. We’re just really, really good at promoting fights. That’s why everybody else sucks. And that’s why we make so much money”. That’s an oversimplification of their argument. Then the UFC says, “Hey, we’re gonna get into boxing”.

OK. My question then is, why hasn’t the UFC gotten into boxing yet? If they are such miraculous promoters, why haven’t they started promoting boxing and just crush the competition? Why do they need a federal law to change before they get into boxing? That has nothing to do with how well they promote a fight. They want a certain structure in place before they get their foot in the door.

I just have overall concern about what this law is; what it's hoping to achieve.

And then if it achieves what I think it's designed to achieve, which is to let the UFC really monopolize things – at least in the United States – I think you're going to see one big brand dominating the sport, in an industry where the labor, the fighters can’t unionize, and can’t push back because independent contractors can’t form a union. So it just seems like it’s a recipe for a power imbalance between fighters and promoters.

So your main concern is fighters losing their rights? Would some fighters still be able to make huge money, like the tens of millions we hear about?

I’ll put it this way – if a fight can generate massive amounts of money, for whatever reason resonates with the public, who deserves to pocket most of that money, the people in the ring, taking in some cases, incurable lifelong damage, right? Like prize fighting is a nasty, nasty business.

If an event in prizefighting generates a large prize, who deserves it? The fighter, or the person putting it on? Now, I’m not anti-business. If you’re putting it on, and you’re taking a risk, of course, you deserve to make a profit, but who deserves the lion’s share? And if you say, “Yeah, the prizefighter does not deserve the biggest prize”, what you have in mixed martial arts – I’m going to give rough estimates – but in the antitrust case, it came out that the fighters take home about 20 per cent of the revenues, collectively. I’m not talking about the headline [fight].

I mean, all the money that comes in, the fighters combined, take home about 20 percent. Now in boxing, fighters could take home 50 percent, 60 percent, 80 percent. If they self-promote, or the Mayweather route, they could take home almost all of the money.

That’s a brilliant thing. So do you want to change the law, where eventually you could have a promoter giving the fighters only 20 per cent? Is that a good thing? Now 20 per cent, whether it’s a lot or a little that just depends on the boxer; the times; the storyline; public interest. And so I don’t like putting out the number like $100million, because that’s crazy – like boxers are getting paid too much.

If the event generates that much money, who deserves that money? That’s the way I look at it. And I wouldn’t want to see a landscape where prizefighters take home 20 per cent. And other people involved in the industry, primarily the promoters, are pocketing almost all the rest of it – that just seems like a terrible power disparity.

And if that’s created, that’s tough to fix. It’s again – the lack of unionization rights for independent contractors. It just becomes a tricky thing. And so I get all of the reasons why the Ali Act was created – this seems to just be undoing all of it, for no good reason.

I just don’t see the logic or the reasons behind undoing the boxer protections of the Ali Act.

What’s the timeline looking like on this – how long until it goes before the authorities?

I’m not a US political commentator but my understanding is congress has basically shut down for the summer. In the fall, they’re going to reconvene. And I imagine that’s when the rubber hits the road.

What I know is the bill says that if it passes, once it passes, it’s only 30 days. So it’s going to be implemented like that [clicks fingers]. I imagine, the UFC is ready to hit the ground running if and when this passes, because it’s a 30-day window after it gets passed into law.

How long that’ll take? I don’t know. But I think the fall is when the action is going to happen.

We’ve mentioned some of the headlines of the bill. As you ingested the rest of it, what were your overall thoughts?

The main thing this does is it creates something called Unified Boxing Organizations.

And it says, so it’s called a UBO. And it says, if you are a UBO, you don’t have to comply with the Ali Act. So all these protections fighters have, they don’t matter anymore, if you’re a UBO.

And so then to be a UBO, it basically says, “Here’s what you need to do, you have to promote fights, have fighters under contract, you have to basically give them the health and safety checks that athletic commissions already give eye exams, HIV tests, those kinds of things”. So you’re basically like an in-house athletic commission… pregnancy tests, MRIs. And then this gets interesting.

You have to have an in-house anti-doping program, which the UFC already has. And you have to have your own training facilities, which the UFC already has. And basically comply with all of these things and a handful of others, and you’re a UBO.

And you don’t have to comply with the Ali Act anymore; fighter rights are gone. So the fighters, they don’t get to know how much money you’re making. The fighters, they don’t have rights in the title; they don’t have rights in the ranking anymore; you get to decide those kinds of things.

That’s what this law says. That’s as I read through it – that’s what it says to me. And then it throws in those other protections for fighters; minimum insurance; minimum pay per round in about, but the gist of it, the heart of it is creating this class of super promoter that has special privileges and rights compared to all the other promoters out there.

Do you think other promoters are going to sign up to this and run their businesses the same way? Or will they be able to run their businesses the way that they do already, just with the additional costs and additions?

It’ll create a big barrier for entry for a lot of existing promoters. I’m not talking about the biggest promoters, but if you want to promote boxing or MMA, there’s not a lot of barriers to entry.

Like it’s not hard to get a license; it’s not expensive, and there’s not a whole lot you need. But now on top of whatever it costs to get a license, you need to have your performance institute; you need your training facilities that the boxers could use. And you need to create and pay for your anti-doping program.

It’s actually interesting – the way it reads is you don’t need to have out-of-competition testing, but you can do out of competition testing. But when you run a card, you yourself are going to have to test half of those fighters in competition for anti-doping purposes. And so it’s just created a lot more expense that the promoter must bear to get into the game.

So there’s more of a barrier of entry. I don’t know what the main promoters believe about this. I don’t know if they’re going to be cooperating with the UFC or if they’re happy to have this new entity existing, competing against them.

It’s interesting the way this was designed. 

Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, is on The Ring ratings panel and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.