Comments Thread For: Eddie Hearn says 'we don?t rely on Saudi Arabia to run our business' after Dana White and Turki Alalshikh join forces

[LAchargers373]

Turki got his foot in the door with Hearn overpaying. Now he’s got Dana and their model he can use that money he was overpaying to find and promote his own guys. People will come sign with them or become irrelevant. Just like ufc.

[Grimmer]

Boxing isn’t UFC. The talent pool and global participation level in boxing is far too big to constrain into a single organisation of a couple of hundred fighters across 12 divisions. The sanctioning bodies for better or worse are actually a feature of boxing, not a bug and they serve to prevent a bottleneck at the top of the sport which would definitely happen if there were only one set of rankings.

People think they like the idea of one ranking system and one champion, but they certainly wouldn’t if they realised that it would decimate the talent pool over time and ultimately you’d be left with the best fighting the best of a very shallow pool. And this will obviously happen if you have closed off system like UFC. Because fighters won’t simply be able to win their way into the organisation. Because participants will not be selected on sporting merit, but based off business decisions (I.E, is the fighter a big draw, do they have a big social media following, are they marketable, can they speak English well?) So you’re going to have very good fighters who will just not be able to participate in this new league no matter how good they are because their not considered “good for business” and a lesser talented fighter will be allowed entry because they meet the business criteria more. Thus the idea of “the best fighting the best” already becomes something of an illusion.

We need promoters and sanctioning bodies to still operate outside of this new league in order to prevent a monopolisation and the bottleneck of opportunities and participation at the top of the sport.

[Boxing 112]

I don't know if this would be a good thing because Dana White has a reputation of the not paying his fighters their just due. It's been reported that he often fleeces them. Unless, you can draw him some money.

This will be different, although financially they will want to be smart, Turki/Saudi aim is to bring more eyes on them for Saudi 2030 vision and 2034 World Cup, the fighters will still get paid good. If anything at present they are all being way overpaid by Saudi

[super-x]

I think turki offered this boxing league venture to eddie, warren and the rest of the promoters hes worked with, but they rejected the concept so he went and did it else where with others who are very familiar with the concept. Its great for fans and fighters. The plan seems to recruit all the younger up and comers, prospects and so forth, gradually building up there stable, over the years when the current crop of champs retire from boxing and end there relationship with there current promoters, there wont be any fighters left who are working the alphabet title routes. They all know financially no one can pay like turki can, and it is prize fighting after all. 5 - 10 years from now the boxing league would have pushed all the others out.

[Liondw]

Eddie at least admitted that he's gotten paid a lot of money by Turki, or should we say the gov't of Saudi Arabia.

A boxing league, that doesn't sound good. Perhaps I'm too old fashioned, or am picturing some kind of weird league format.

However; they probably are thinking of some type of tournament, or competition like the cruiserweight and super middleweight ones won by Usyk and Andre Ward.

[Southpaw16]

This is a game changer, and Eddie Hearn knows it, because Turki Aliakshi is willing to take enormous losses for years to build this boxing league. He doesn’t care if he’s profitable, so you can’t compete with him, when trying to sign fighters.

The other promoters and belts are going to be the defacto minor leagues, where fighters build themselves up until they sign with Turki.

[TMLT87]

How come on average boxers earn more than MMA fighters do. When mixed martial artists draw the largest audience and pay per view numbers?

Because the lunatics run the asylum in boxing.

[champion4ever]

On average they don't, only the top boxers on average take almost all of the money in boxing, what do the rest earn with 2nd & 3rd jobs? Plus Turki has more recently been over paying & loosing money every card, ufc makes profit.
The ufc makes more middle class earners than boxing

So what are you saying? That MMA guys don't have 2nd and 3rd jobs too? Listen, what I am saying. I said on average. Sure there are may poor boxers but there are also a lot of poor Mixed Martial Arts guys too.

When you combined all the fighters in the world and compare them with all the MMA guys in the world. It's true on average boxers are paid more than MMA. A boxer's median range is much higher.