Comments Thread For: An inconvenient take on the night Anthony Joshua was stopped by Daniel Dubois

[thack]

If you let the money men in they will always want their way, unfortunately the Saudi's have got skeletons in the cupboard and want to buy their way around that matter.You have to take the rough with the smooth as it's the price we have to pay. If it was left to the greedy promoters these fights wouldn't happen , they didn't when there was no Saudi money , so that we know. It's human greed at its peak and when they talk about 'Holy places' and suck up to these people in such a way is sick. We all know if it wasn't for the money the Saudi's would be looked at completely different , as they were before. Uncomfortable as it is make the most of these fights as this can't last forever. Joshua with his brutal loss should never be part of that , certainly not as a headliner , but we know , the kid paying will get his favourites at any cost ! this is about names and not ability . Enjoy the ride , even the sharp bends!

[M111]

It sounds like the FA (football association) are likely to take legal action as a Daily Telegraph reporter was also barred from attending the fight, so this isn’t an isolated case by any means.

All very well in Saudi, but if his Excellentwat thinks he can screw around with the rights of the free press in the west, he’ll get his ar5e kicked back to the sand dunes.

Keep your dodgy humans rights to your own country is the message. Great article and long, long overdue. Anyone who doesn’t believe this is a serious problem should go live in Saudi for a bit and see how they get on.

It’s great fights are happening. It’s not great he’s using it as a vehicle for sports washing and trying to impose their crappy approach to rights our predecessors have fought hard to earn, a free press that holds people to account being one of them.

[Liondw]

I'll tell you a few things:

(1) it's great that Turki makes big fights happen that might never have happened, (2) Joshua-Dubois was exciting, although not most of the card, and (3) I got a bit of a strange feeling seeing the Saudi anthem played at Wembley.

I'm guessing you felt the same.

[57Blues]

oh dear lol

turki doesnt like the way u have changed your thread order either

OH Dear, dear dear dear dear..........................

[57Blues]

is he doing anything that other promoters have not done?

Such courage such deep convictions such uninteresting writing ............................

[gjakovic]

I can remember a time, not so long ago, when a certain streaming boxing network was bending over backwards to get into the good graces, and deep pockets, of Turki. My my, how times have changed.

[Poopdick]

yall need to do a piece on how annoying , incompetent, and pathetic that ref was.

[Tatabanya]

Until yesterday, fighters fought for WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO.

Now they're fighting for NWO.

[Moz_boxing]

so turki did what every promoter does since decades. i will give an advise to boxingscene - cry a bit louder because not everyone can hear you. the event was great and the saudi anthem is as useless as playing god save the king but it is what it is. when it comes to the whole sportswashing or women rights b.s i would say care about whats wrong in our western countries because there is a lot more wrong here than over there. I rather live in a country where they donīt respect women that choose to be wh.ores than in countries that tell our childrens that a girl can be a boy and a boy can be a girl and let drag queens brainwash childrens at the school, Can you PLEASE write an article about this?

[Clegg]

Nothing against the writer, I've liked a lot of his work, but I disagree with the context he puts these events in. The article starts with the idea that we have a free, open, honest press but that it is under threat due to these Saudi tactics. The problem is that all these tactics are already in use. They were established by the Americans who have run the sport for the last 100+ years, and the more powerful UK promoters have followed the same formula. We also see it happening in other sports. Saudis aren't changing the rules, they're playing by the rules already established: the more favourable your coverage, the more access you get. Boxingscene has happily played by these rules for other promoters but wants to cry foul this time around.

Remember when Coppinger was banned by PBC from the Crawford-Spence fight? Cleggeridge Farm remembers. Also remembers how boxingscene didn't say a word about it. Where was the outrage? Why weren't you on that moral high ground then like you are now? You didn't care about a boxing journalist being denied access then. A typical case of somebody only caring about a problem when it impacts them, yet expecting the rest of us to support you? You didn't support the last guy it happened to.

Jake Donovan (formerly of this site) mentioned on twitter that when he started working for SecondsOut years ago, they forbid any criticism of Frank Warren. This is the way the boxing media has conducted itself for a long time, they are biased towards certain promoters. A lot of the time there isn't even any mystery to it, The Ring is owned by GBP, and boxingscene itself was for years owned by the parent company of Showtime. In the UK, Sky are owned by the same company that own the most popular UK newspaper, a top radio station and multiple websites, all of which give better coverage to Sky boxing events than those shown by other networks. But fans weren't supposed to care about any of that, presumably because no Saudis were involved it was OK for our media to be biased.

Boxingscene has pushed an anti-Saudi agenda, oftentimes the articles contain no new information, it's just one writer repeating what another said the day before. I'm not even saying that I disagree with all of the viewpoints, but it's repetitive seeing them re-published over and over. We've had about 20 articles that criticise the Saudis and 19 of them had nothing new to say. No doubt most of the articles on Beterbiev-Bivol will include the same 'ok this is one of the best fights of recent years but let's instead focus on Saudi politics because that's what boxing fans want' approach.

Compare this to the coverage for Canelo. This guy is damaging the sport with his cherry-picking, drug-using, rehydration-clauses, catchweights and corrupt scorecards. Only Canelo fans support this, regular boxing fans do not. But boxingscene is all in on supporting him, so we got daily articles praising him, his mismatch fight and the undercard. There was even an article suggesting that Caleb Plant might make the HOF. There was never a sticky made for the Dubois-AJ event, yet the Canelo-Berlanga thread is still stickied at the top despite that fight happening 10 days ago and nobody talking about it anymore.

You are not putting out fair or honest coverage, you are coming with an agenda, and the person you're biased against finally grew tired of it. I'm not supporting it, just saying it's nothing new, things have worked this way in boxing journalism and US/UK sports media for a long time.

This is what makes the boxingscene agenda so transparent. You want to keep trying to take the moral high ground but you've shown zero morality on any of these issues when Americans and Brits were doing the exact same thing. When the site was in the pocket of the more powerful promoters you had no objections to other members of the media being mistreated by them. Free speech hasn't been reduced, it's exactly as it was before. It's just that in the past, the 'favourable coverage gets you access' arrangement benefitted this site, but this time around it went against you. Considering that you're a key part of the corrupt system the complaints are hollow and hypocritical.