Boxing’s Long (and Complicated) Road To Saudi Arabia
In a little over 3 months, boxing’s biggest matchup with its biggest men will take place in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It marks the culmination of years of flirting, threatening, and posturing between boxing promoters with one thing on their mind (money) and… one of the most conservative countries on the planet with an affection for humanitarian crises and human rights violations.
For years we had the possibility (really it was a threat) of Manny Pacquiao, one of the few international superstars in boxing, heading to Saudi Arabia to face Amir Khan. Because of course, Saudi Arabia is close enough to Pakistan (an Asian country, not part of the Middle East) no one will notice the difference, thus a huge site fee would be due and a massive influx of interest in boxing all across the Middle East.
But making fights in the Middle East isn’t easy. Fighters don’t want to be in a place which requires weeks of readjustment. The country is frequently on a list of unsafe places in the world to visit. And the after-fight party likely doesn’t feature the assortment of characters you might find in a Las Vegas club on a Saturday night.
However, the biggest reason to go to a country like Saudi Arabia is money and according to Bob Arum, it is mostly a facade. Arum has made a career out of using foreign money from far off places in the world as a negotiating tactic and has even put his money where is mouth is in an ill-fated attempt to corner the Chinese market. But even Bob knows most of it is (was) nonsense. “For years we’ve had these proposals from people in the Mideast, whether it’s Abu Dhabi, or the Emirates, or Saudi Arabia, and we’re still waiting for the first deposit for the fight to happen. It didn’t, so now we’ve shifted our attention from the Mideast to the Far East and we’re looking for Malaysian money.”
Ah yes, the elusive and plentiful Malaysian wealth only exceeded by their hunger to host premium boxing events. They beat out Saudi Arabia.
The ever present threat of big time boxing going to the Middle East was all but a joke for a long time. The money was never really there and no promoter ever expressed legitimate interest in heading over there outside of threatening some network executive.
Everything changed in 2016 when Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman announced his (their) Saudi Vision 2030. To save you the PR pitch, it’s a plan to turn Saudi Arabia into a westernized country by the year 2030 without leaving behind its “traditions”. The reality is that oil is a finite resource and Saudi Arabia may soon find its biggest export being pieces of journalists, rather than what is buried in their deserts.
To reduce their reliance on oil they’ve turned their attention to “modernizing” their country with a diversified economy. Essentially, they are throwing gobs of money at their problem and putting on events that serve as distractions to the harsh realities of the country. This isn’t unlike what we’re seeing in Qatar, Kuwait, and of course the UAE.
Of course, money is money and Ruiz and Joshua are getting paid handsomely. So why not just grab the cash, fight, and get the hell out of there?
The problem is that the General Sports Authority is in charge of bringing over these events and while that sounds like a great place to buy some sporting equipment, it’s anything but. The General Sports Authority is a government agency which seeks to bring over events using a fund of money given to them by the government.
Unlike an entity like MGM who offers up site fees, this is essentially a propaganda move from the Saudi government meant to serve a purpose. Don’t agree? The WWE signed a lucrative 10 year deal to bring events to the (beautiful™️) Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, yet they mostly serve as 5 hour long commercials for a country that desperately wants to be seen as one of the major players of the sports and entertainment world despite a human rights record spottier than insert-troubled-boxer-here’s arrest record.
At the beginning of the Saudi 2030 announcement everyone seemed to be on board. Many US companies, like Bob Arum, saw the potential in this move by Saudi Arabia and tried to get in on the action letting the Kingdom invest massive amounts of money in their companies and signing deals to bring their business over.
That is until the Saudi government did some Saudi government shit and ordered the dismembering of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That PR hit was too much and many companies pulled out of the noble attempt to ‘modernize’ Saudi Arabia including Endeavor, yes that Endeavor, who returned $400 million of Saudi money in the process. (Of course, this didn’t stop the WWE. They are hardly a moral compass though.)
The rematch between Ruiz and Joshua resorts to being an effective way for a tyrannical and radical government to sport-wash, or use the event to enhance their own reputation while everyone ignores the atrocities that may be happening elsewhere. Of course, you can look at events like the Thrilla In Manilla and the Rumble In The Jungle which brought attention but did nothing to further the progression of the respective host countries. Roughly 40 years later and the Philippines is run by a dictator who encourages mercenaries to kill anyone caught with drugs while Zaire (which is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) doesn’t even allow peaceful protests.
Could it be that money was the sole reason for Eddie Hearn to take his mega cash cow and one of the two bonafide boxing superstars in the world to the Middle East or is there some ulterior motive?
There are a plethora of reasons we can look at as to why this fight wound up in the “Crown Jewel” of the Middle East (trademarked by the WWE).
If you’re a Hearn-apologist you might look at the fact that Ruiz stated publicly he was unwilling to fight in the UK and Hearn had to look out for the interests of his fighter who lost his title by going to the US. To find common ground, where could they have gone that would also offer up the money necessary for a fight of this magnitude?
If you’re a conspiracy theorist, you may look at the choice of network as the real culprit. Hearn has a vested interest in the future of DAZN and this fight is crucial to the success or failure of the streaming service. DAZN’s done a (depending how you see it: great or terrible) job paying fighters handsomely to come to their platform.
The problem this fight may have run into is that with neither Joshua nor Ruiz had a contract to appear on DAZN and this opened the door for everyone else. With Showtime and FOX bidding for the rights to air the fight, and no doubt putting it on pay-per-view with tremendous upside for both fighters, DAZN had to ask itself a serious question about whether or not they could compete. For DAZN to compete with the revenue generated from pay-per-view, they’d have to open their wallets and dig deep. The only problem is that numbers for any fight not including Canelo (literally only 1 fight) have not been good enough to publicly announce.
This means that DAZN would have to pay an equal or greater amount for the heavyweight rematch which promises to deliver fewer subscriptions than Canelo. DAZN may be interested in reckless spending, but even they aren’t that crazy.
The real question to ask is whether or not Hearn should be criticized for the move? It’s true that maximizing revenue is part of the game as a promoter and Hearn is not the only one guilty of doing such. However, it is worth asking the question of whether or not Eddie heavily considered his business partnership with DAZN (part-owners of Matchroom USA) when mulling over the network deals. Ruiz and Joshua are not signed to DAZN and Hearn saying that Saudi Arabia was the only option to broadcast the fight ignores the fact that Showtime would have aired the fight on pay-per-view.
Every step of the DAZN chapter of Anthony Joshua’s career has been bizarre. An uncharacteristically flat performance against Alexander Povetkin, the unprecedented (and telegraphed) “negotiation” with Deontay Wilder prior to his fight with Tyson Fury, the April date at Wembley for a fight with Wilder, Jarrell Miller’s drug test, Andy Ruiz stepping in, weird corner exchanges, Andy Ruiz beating him, the rumors for why he lost, and the Saudi Arabia saga could not have been booked by even the most creative minds.
It was this sequence of events that led us here. If Joshua had done what was expected to Jarrell Miller, or even Ruiz stepping in late, it is unlikely Saudi Arabia gets their fight. Joshua is fighting in the US or the UK in a fight against someone. Anyone. He remains the king of the heavyweight division. Instead, he travels east to fight for a Prince.
