Is the Saudi Unofficial Heavyweight Tourney Good For Boxing?

The past 12 months have been interesting for boxing as Saudi Arabia has fully planted their feet into hosting significant boxing events. They had already done it with the WWE but hadn’t fully committed to boxing until about a year ago. Turki Alalshikh, Chairmen of the General Entertainment Authority in Saudi Arabia, has quickly become the face of the whole movement. He is a fan of the sport and likes big boxing events, especially if they involve the heavyweight division. He’s not alone in that thinking, as the heavyweights have always brought the casual audience to watch because of the fighter’s sizes and abilities to knock someone out. In case anyone didn’t know, knockouts matter, and they are what draw eyeballs to TVs and digital devices worldwide.

Alalshikh has been like a kid in a candy store as he has been able to play matchmaker with what seems to be an unlimited amount of capital. Money & ego have come in the middle of making the fights that pit the best vs the best, but Alalshikh’s involvement has made that a non-issue. It brought two promoters, Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn, who were bitter rivals, to publicly place nice. That’s what happens when millions are going into your pocket without having to do all of the heavy lifting. Warren and Hearn can’t stop smiling, and since they have most of the big-name heavyweights or have access to them, Alalshikh continues to tap them on the shoulder for events.

Most recently, ESPN reported that a deal is nearing completion that will see Deontay Wilder face Zhilei Zhang and Filip Hrgovic face Daniel Dubois on June 1. Wilder was last in the ring in December when he lost to Joseph Parker, and Zhang lost to Parker. On that same December card, Hrgovic earned a knockout victory over Mark De Mori and Dubois beat Jarrell Miller by unanimous decision.

It seems like Alalshikh is conducting an unofficial tournament within the heavyweight division, and those who suffered losses go up against each other while the winners of their fights do the same. This is new for the heavyweight division, and taking it all in is hard. Are heavyweights fighting in morning/afternoon fights good for boxing? Yes, the matchups are good for the sport, and those fighters staying active is too, but are they gaining anything outside of a big purse and being a source of entertainment for the Saudi fans? According to a source, the Anthony Joshua vs Francis Ngannou PPV outside of DAZN only had 5,000-10,000 buys, and the event was held on a Friday afternoon. DAZN carried the promotion, so the numbers had to be much bigger than that, but was it more than 100,000? It’s not likely, as if it was, DAZN would have gladly put that number out there for the press, but they didn’t.

Again, it begs the question, is this good for boxing? There isn’t a clear answer to that, and the Saudi involvement isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so we all will have to get used to seeing big fights in the afternoon. The unofficial heavyweight tourney is nice, but is the sport gaining anything from it? At least now, we are getting the matchups we want to see, so we have to pick and choose what we value as important.

Abraham Gonzalez

Abraham Gonzalez is the founder of FightsATW. His journalistic work has been published and used across several platforms to include online, network TV and promotional companies. He is an American Public University alumnus and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA). Abraham was the Managing Editor for NYFights, Big Fight Weekend, contributed to FanSidedMMA and ProBoxTV.

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