The alliance formed between Turki Alalshikh, Dana White and Nick Khan has caused quite a stir in boxing. It's either being decried as doomsday for the sport, or the panacea for the industry. It remains to be seen if this new outfit will revive the game, kill it, or just do a different version of the status quo.
But there have been past disrupters that have come into this racket. From Harold Smith (remember him?), and more recently PBC, DAZN and Riyadh Season have all arrived and made varying degrees of impact on the business and its participants.
It will be interesting to see what TKO Boxing brings to the table in the upcoming months and years.
Riyadh Season
Is it a 'league', or just another promotional company (an incredibly well-funded one, at that) with it's own roster of boxers that will compete for their own titles, or something that will be inclusive of all boxers across the world? Will this unify the sport, or further divide it?
That remains to be seen. Everyone can agree boxing needed some changes, to what degree is what many observers are now debating.
But how did we get to this point? It says here that it's never just one thing, but a little bit of everything that can be blamed. Everyone played a role in this decline. Here's one scribes quick primer of the culprits...
- You have the sanctioning bodies, who in theory are supposed to be the regulators of the game, but instead became enablers. As they played favorites with big name champions and their high powered promoters, who simply didn't follow their own rules and consistently call for mandatory defenses. (Certain mandatories weren't all that mandatory) In essence, they became co-promoters to the marquee stars of the sport. You also had situations where certain belt-holders were allowed to not defend their titles at all for years at a time (Jermall Charlo and the WBC, ahem)
@lunatoonboxing
Which meant that every day working stiffs in the rankings oftentimes were left waiting for well-deserved title shots and stagnated.
And then you had the creation of 'franchise', 'super' and 'interim' belts which really were just a means of insulating fighters and their camps from taking on certain uncomfortable foes, and a way to siphon off a few bucks on boxers.
(Now, this is not to say that boxing needs, or should have just one belt per division. That's a whole 'nother column that needs to be written.)
Riyadh Season
- Then you have the networks/platforms who have poured millions of dollars into boxing, but in recent years instead of just televising the sport, have actually gotten into exclusive output deals with promoters. Meaning that instead of getting the best bouts possible, the subscribers are getting a steady diet of 'house fights' that are available to their roster.
And lets be honest, very few real fights are made by those in charge, and worse, there seems to be no quality control at these outfits that broadcast boxing. Where have you gone Lou DiBella?
Worse, the entities who have had a hand in developing star boxers, do not want those same fighters to ''go across the street'' to face other boxers, who are tied with rival networks. This has been going on since the days of HBO and Showtime.
PBC
- Overlooking all this is the promoters, who are all independent of one another, and have their own network obligations and agendas to fulfill. While trying to carve out their own dominance in this marketplace, which means oftentimes not even acknowledging other promoters and their fighters. This has been an ongoing dynamic for decades, but Don King and Bob Arum would come together to break bread when called for.
Anyone else remember the 'Cold War' that went on between Golden Boy Promotions and Top Rank back in the early 2010's? There have been some cross-promotional fights that have taken place (thanks Turki!!), but there have been many more bouts that have been left on the table, or happened a bit too late for everyone's liking.
What you usually end up with is a champion who becomes a key part of programming that fulfills a promoters obligation to bring a title fight to a particular network. These champions may be in the same divisions, but oftentimes they are in different galaxies.
There are other issues I can point out, but I'm running out of space for this column. But the bottom line is that if everyone listed above would have done their jobs more honorably -- because this system could've worked with those involved -- maybe there would be no need for another entity to come and ''save boxing''.
Ask yourself this, do you think boxing is as popular as it was in the 80's?
Most would say no.
And how did it happen? Well, as that old saying goes, ''it was gradual....and then it was sudden."
3KR
On this week's episode of 'the 3 Knockdown Rule', Mario Lopez and I discuss TKO Boxing and the NYSAC's final ruling on the Tank Davis-Lamont Roach fight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7S2tkk2-PI&t=17s
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