SF Mayor Daniel Lurie is all-in on Ed Pereira's boxing bonanza
Winning over City Hall & top Gavin Newsom ally Chris Gruwell.
“Bringing boxing back to the people.”
If you thought the political marriage between Dana White & US President Donald J. Trump creating the UFC White House event was one of the strangest unions ever, I’ve got an even stranger story for you.
A story about how a marketing guy from Wales, who came out of nowhere, conquered the San Francisco political & lobbying class in the backyard of Nancy Pelosi & Gavin Newsom by promising to run the biggest boxing fight in the history of the city.
It’s the perfect kind of story that illustrates the current state of affairs for both boxing and America in 2026. A marriage between combat sports, lobbyists, and world governments. It also demonstrates the raw financial and branding power of Saudi Arabian money. The Riyadh Season campaign is highly influential, and Ed Pereira is living proof of it.
It’s been several months since we’ve written about Ed Pereira, International Man of Mystery, at The MMA Draw.
Who? You’re not alone in asking that question. But it’s a question we’ve spent hundreds of hours investigating over the last six months by interviewing key sources in San Francisco, New York, and London.
Why? Because this is a story about how a complete unknown stranger halfway around the world managed to win the support of San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie — currently with a 74% approval rating — and one of the city’s most powerful lobbyists, Chris Gruwell, who represents the Golden State Warriors & San Francisco 49ers.
It is easily one of the 10 strangest stories I’ve encountered in nearly 30 years of writing about combat sports.
If you don’t know San Francisco politics, you’re not alone. But you certainly know quite a bit about how Nancy Pelosi operated as US Speaker of the House and how current California Governor + 2028 US Presidential candidate Gavin Newsom operates. San Francisco is their turf, and it just got seduced by the charms of a UK businessman whom few in boxing have ever heard of.
A July 11th boxing event promising to attract over 130,000 people is now going head-to-head against Conor McGregor’s UFC return to Las Vegas for International Fight Week.
How on earth did San Francisco — and its taxpayers — end up in this position? And who is going to be paying for this?
Where to start?
Ed Pereira’s July 11th San Francisco boxing event has evolved into something very different. This is now a revealing case study about political access, civic branding, Silicon Valley influence, Sovereign Wealth Fund ambition, and the increasingly blurred line between entertainment spectacle and government power.
At the center of this story is Daniel Lurie, a new mayor attempting to rebrand San Francisco as a city on the comeback trail. Mayor Lurie has aggressively promoted sports, nightlife, artistic endeavors, and major public events as symbols of urban recovery after years of negative headlines surrounding homelessness, crime, and downtown decline.
Mayor Lurie’s current popularity matters because Ed Pereira’s event is now directly tied to his political credibility. The Mayor’s endorsement transformed Pereira from a marketing gadfly into a legitimate City Hall-backed boxing entrepreneur almost overnight.
Modern political influence is less about institutional credibility and more about narrative construction. It’s why every hustler at a Venture Capital or Private Equity conference is constantly using the word “storytelling.”
Ed Pereira is selling a perfectly-tailored story for a city desperate to believe in its resurgence.
The game plan? Present himself as a pioneer and visionary capable of delivering a globally significant moment through outrageous ambition and celebrity star power, while moving fast enough to secure City Hall’s endorsement before facing tough questions.
How did this man gain access to the highest levels of San Francisco politics so quickly?
The political power of Turki Alalshikh
The story of Ed Pereira’s adventures from Wales to San Francisco involves riding the wave of Turki Alalshikh’s boxing dreams.
How does someone from Cardiff end up representing Riyadh?
Mr. Pereira’s public narrative is that he was recruited into the world of SELA, a key organizer behind the Kingdom’s major global ventures (SELA owns 60% of TKO’s Zuffa Boxing), due to iVisit Media’s successful branding activation campaigns. Through connections developed in rugby (the Welsh Rugby Union) and football, he was eventually brought in by SELA to help with flyers and digital campaigns for major boxing fights.
Was the Saudi PIF’s ownership of Newcastle United a key bridge for SELA & Ed Pereira to connect?
Mystery number one: What was the name of the person at SELA who made this connection? We spent countless hours investigating and could not produce the specific name of this individual.
The only name we could even guess was Ed Hepworth, a former NBA executive who became the CFO of Six Nations Rugby before transferring over to SELA International as their CFO.
In a written response, Ed Pereira told The MMA Draw that this was not factually accurate.
Whoever introduced iVisit Media to SELA gave Ed Pereira a golden ticket, and he used it to travel to the Golden Gate Bridge. His timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous.
In January 2025, San Francisco elected Daniel Lurie as its new mayor.
Mayor Lurie ran on a campaign platform promising voters that he would repair the global image of San Francisco’s name and do so in a way that integrated technology to dramatically change the way business is done in the city. San Francisco was open for business.
Turki Alalshikh wanted to run a major boxing event at Alcatraz, the famous Bay Area prison. There was a permitting process with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy agency that SELA needed to navigate. Enter Ed Pereira.
Through records requests produced to the public, San Francisco city e-mails revealed that Ed Pereira managed to hire Dennise Abad as his key navigator. She worked at GGNPC and knew the ins and outs of San Francisco politics. A rare opportunity to hire someone highly organized and qualified.
Then a roadblock emerged. US President Donald Trump wanted to reopen Alcatraz as an active prison at a price tag of $152 million. That slammed the door shut on Turki’s Alcatraz boxing dreams.
While Ed Pereira was rapidly making San Francisco connections, presumably using Turki Alalshikh’s name and Dr. Rakan AlHarthy’s leadership, Pereira was also working with IDEKO and other key power players to organize the May 2025 Times Square boxing event featuring Ryan Garcia.
As Thomas Hauser exhaustively chronicled in The Guardian, SELA’s event in New York was a huge political and logistical battle involving Turki Alalshikh, then-Mayor Eric Adams, the NYPD, and interference from elected leaders on both the state and Federal level.
Ed Pereira and Turki would soon have a falling out, reportedly over a financial dispute. Ed was, however, by no means a loser. He managed to quickly build connections with key individuals, including Bobby McGuire, President of the FDNY Bravest Boxing team. iVisit Media, Ed Pereira’s family company, was building a Rolodex of power players through brand activation events.
Politicians around the world now saw Ed Pereira as associated with Turki and SELA’s boxing activities. That opened up some amazing opportunities. Multiple sources, on background, indicated that Pereira landed on the radar of the New York Yankees. The organization allegedly expressed interest in running an April 2026 fight at Yankee Stadium.
So, why choose San Francisco over New York? Because Pereira had already established inroads in the Bay Area during the Alcatraz negotiations. The Visionary saw a political pathway with minimum roadblocks, and he was exactly correct in his assessment.
Winning over SF City Hall’s gatekeeper
With the wind at his back, Ed Pereira quickly navigated the labyrinth of San Francisco bureaucracy.
One month before the 2025 Times Square SELA boxing event, officials in the San Francisco government included a key and powerful political force in negotiations — Martha Cohen.
Martha Cohen was San Francisco’s special events coordinator for decades.
In 2013, Joe Lacob and Peter Guber pushed to build a new waterfront arena for the Golden State Warriors, years before the franchise began winning NBA championships. To help secure support for the project, the team hired key lobbyist Chris Gruwell, president of Platinum Advisors and former finance chief for Gavin Newsom’s mayoral campaign.
(Platinum Advisors is the same lobbying firm that Frank & Lorenzo Fertitta used in California when they owned the UFC.)
When the Warriors were planning their numerous victory parades, Martha Cohen served as the City’s lead coordinator, overseeing those events.
As this 2023 Mission Local article highlighted, it was Martha Cohen who was a key figure in charge of preparing San Francisco to host APEC — the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation. This was the famous business summit in which then-President Joe Biden met with Xi Jinping.
Government officials I spoke with had few worries that the city could throw a big party. Several mentioned Martha Cohen by name. The city’s special projects director is described as “old-school competent” and has World Series parades and civic extravaganzas on her resume: “When she retires, they’re gonna have, like, five people replace her,” says a former mayoral staffer. “The logistics of it, I’m not concerned about.”
San Francisco’s image of decaying public streets, filthy from human waste and drug use haunted the political class. SF City Hall managed to power-wash the streets and move the homeless temporarily into indoor facilities for the November 2023 summit.
Key word: temporary. Weeks after the APEC summit, the streets were dirty again.
Martha Cohen did her job — and kept it. Then-Mayor London Breed did not — and lost hers.
In 2024, she lost the SF Mayoral election to Daniel Lurie.
The new mayor promised to clean up the streets of San Francisco, establish law & order, integrate new technology to modernize the way the city did business, and bring big cultural events to the city.
Winning over Martha Cohen and playing into Mayor Lurie’s new political agenda was the perfect scenario for Ed Pereira to establish a foothold at City Hall.
Documents produced via public records request revealed that Ed Pereira went right to work and engaged in multiple meetings with Martha Cohen after the May 2025 Times Square SELA boxing event.
Ed Pereira scored big political connections.
Pereira got Martha Cohen on his side, winning over institutional power at City Hall.
Pereira found the perfect SF Mayor in Daniel Lurie to push the Mayor’s agenda with a mutually appealing dream.
Pereira scored an alliance with one of the City’s most powerful permitting contractors and event organizers, Kyle Meyers of Silverback.
iVisit Media lined up all the key political and logistical human components to sell a plan that the man who calls himself “a pioneering visionary and marketing genius” was ready to pitch to the world as a non-promoter promoter who could compete with the big boys of boxing.
The world’s biggest boxing event ever… in San Francisco?
Why there? Why now?
The rumors of a January 2026 press conference at Civic Center Plaza to advertise the world’s largest boxing event were shrouded in mystery. I first heard about this press conference a few days before it was scheduled.
That piqued my curiosity and raised huge questions.
A press conference to announce a major boxing event — with a YouTube media rights deal? It was a stunning impression.
SF Mayor Daniel Lurie was in attendance. He bought Ed Pereira’s sales pitch without any reservations.
“Oh my goodness. I am so fired up to see you all to make sure that we see all of these people, 130,000 people on July 11th. Let’s go.
Boxing was and still is a uniting force for our community. Today, we are announcing a partnership that builds on that incredible history. This July, I am so excited that San Francisco will be home to iVisit Boxing, a week-long series of events across San Francisco and the Bay Area, culminating in a historic match right here in our civic center. Every match will be free and open to the public, bringing world-class sport directly to San Franciscans.
This event will also be broadcast globally on Youtube, sharing our city with audiences around the world.
Now, with every world-class event that we bring to San Francisco, Super Bowl 60, MLB Opening Night, the FIFA World Cup, and now iVisit Boxing, our city, it comes to life.”
The other shocking press conference development? YouTube’s logo was plastered everywhere next to iVB’s logo. It was an unmistakable visual message being sent to the public: YouTube was backing iVB Boxing as a partner.
But what was the full story?
Documents produced via public record requests revealed one hell of a sales pitch. A pitch deck advertised YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, Google and YouTube's “senior leadership teams”, and Zuffa Boxing-aligned Andre Ward.
A picture is worth a thousand words. It also explains why SF Mayor Daniel Lurie went all-in on Ed Pereira’s promise of delivering the world’s biggest boxing event.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that organizers were discussing Oleksandr Usyk vs. Deontay Wilder as the headliner. Boxing writer Dan Rafael asked Wilder’s manager, Shelly Finkel, about these rumors, and Finkel categorically denied any negotiations.
The name-dropping of Usyk and Wilder generated tens of thousands of dollars worth of free press in British media outlets such as the BBC, The Daily Mail, and The Sun.
Even The New York Times got into the action.
“Anybody can go and put a show on and just produce it live on their own YouTube channel… but we are doing exactly the same as what the NFL did. This partnership with YouTube puts us in the next league.”
Pereira told the San Francisco Chronicle that iVB and YouTube had a media rights agreement.
“It would be ridiculous if I had gone and put the YouTube logos all over my press conference, and internationally because we are running an international campaign, and YouTube wouldn’t have signed it off,” Pereira said. “My fights will be on YouTube, there will be 12 of them, the world will see. And I’m really excited that YouTube chose us to be their partner in this.”
Pereira said he plans to reveal more about the deal with YouTube at a later date.
Thanks to the branding power of Riyadh Season and SELA’s Times Square event, Ed Pereira managed to navigate his way through San Francisco City Hall. Then he promised the moon and the stars about producing the biggest boxing event in world history.
How much due diligence was conducted by City Hall? Who was going to say no when you could say yes and use the incredible visual of a World’s Fair-type event to sell the revitalization of San Francisco?
Meet Mr. Fixer
Ed Pereira lined up many of San Francisco’s key political players: Martha Cohen. Mayor Lurie. Chamber of Commerce CEO Rodney Fong. Kyle Meyers of Silverback. And one other really important fixer: top city lobbyist and current California State Athletic Commission board member Chris Gruwell.
The same Chris Gruwell who was Gavin Newsom’s SF Mayoral campaign finance manager. A top SF lobbyist with key connections to Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Joe Lacob (Golden State Warriors), and Jed York (San Francisco 49ers).
The San Francisco Standard named Gruwell in a March 2026 article as one of the city’s top two lobbyists. In a separate Standard article, the publication also labeled Gruwell as one of San Francisco’s most powerful labor lobbyists.
Recently updated May 2026 lobbying records tell the story about the scope of Chris Gruwell’s powerful client list.
An April 2025 Politico California political and tech meet-up with SF Mayor Daniel Lurie featured some heavy hitters from Silicon Valley — and Chris Gruwell.
If Mayor Lurie is invested in a major city project, odds are that Chris Gruwell is carefully watching what City Hall is up to. Nobody has better intelligence.
The San Francisco Chronicle quoted Gruwell’s support for Ed Pereira’s boxing event by stating: “The California State Athletic Commission applauds Mayor Daniel Lurie’s vision in making San Francisco a destination for world-class sporting events.”
The significance of Gruwell’s involvement is a clear demonstration that Pereira’s boxing venture penetrated the upper layers of San Francisco’s political infrastructure.
Much to our surprise, Mr. Gruwell recently made an appearance at the scales for the Ronda Rousey/Gina Carano weigh-ins for the MVP MMA event on Netflix. Fight Hype posted a video.
Chris Gruwell loves being part of the action. He’s now using combat sports to shift from behind-the-scenes to an on-camera public persona.
Right after Ed Pereira’s January 2026 Civic Center press conference, Mayor Lurie and Chris Gruwell appeared with state legislative representative Matt Haney at Abaddon Fight Club. View that video on Instagram. Haney is a key politician for Athletic Commission business in the Sacramento legislature.
Chris Gruwell built his reputation by helping projects such as the Salesforce Tower and Chase Center navigate city government approval. Aligning yourself with someone who carries that level of credibility in San Francisco politics signals seriousness to key decision-makers. An event like Ed Pereira’s boxing bonanza requires permits, regulatory coordination, political goodwill, law enforcement cooperation, labor support, public relations backing, and media amplification.
It’s one big club, and you ain’t in it. But Ed Pereira is.
Ed Pereira won over San Francisco’s political and lobbying class by promising to deliver the biggest possible sporting event outdoors and do so with an unforgettable visual scene. It has proven to be Ed’s marketing hook and his best layer of security for political protection.
There is just one little challenge.
His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs
In multiple conversations with individuals who have interacted with iVisit Media, Ed Pereira’s family business, there is a high level of respect regarding the aggressiveness and sharpness of the company’s young employees in executing various brand activation campaigns.
One source in particular claimed that Ed and his father, Eduardo, operate a business in a relationship similar to Barry and Eddie Hearn. Many iVisit staffers are supposedly in their early twenties, fresh out of university, and work remotely from countries such as India, Argentina, and Italy.
The energy required to solicit new advertising business is intense. Burnout is very real. Advertising is a great business if you have repeat clients, especially if a company like iVisit Media has a prospective golden goose like SELA.
But client retention and payment collection are often challenging. Losing SELA after the Times Square boxing event hurt. With AI on the march, advertising margins are compressing.
According to recent UK Companies House records, iVisit Media significantly increased its cash inflows but also saw a rise in its short-term liabilities.
The advertising business is not a business for the faint of heart.
One month after the January 2026 San Francisco iVB Boxing press conference, His Majesty's Revenue & Customs in the UK posted an official announcement (via The Gazette) of a wind-up petition filed on February 25, 2026, against iVisit Media Ltd.
A wind-up petition is an action by a creditor to try to force the liquidation of a company that owes unpaid debts.
The timeline presented by The Gazette indicated a court hearing scheduled for March 11, 2026.
A few days before that stated court date, Ed Pereira and iVB sponsored an event at The Felt Forum (MSG) in New York for the annual FDNY vs. NYPD boxing exhibition. The International Battle of the Badges. The event was streamed live on YouTube with Ed Pereira and Dan Canobbio as presenters.
The quick backstory on how this deal initially began: At the 2025 Times Square SELA boxing event, Ed Pereira met with Bobby McGuire of the FDNY Bravest Boxing team at a rooftop party. A year later, iVB was sponsoring the FDNY’s charitable combat sports endeavor.
What was the outcome of the supposed March 11, 2026, High Court date? There was an adjournment, and a new court date is apparently scheduled for July 1st.
When we asked Mr. Pereira — in writing — to respond to the HMRC wind-up petition presented in The Gazette, this was his on-the-record response.
“Firstly, you are referring to iVisit Media Ltd in the question above. The event in SF and any IVB event world wide has nothing to do with iVisit Media Ltd.
Secondly, to clarify, the events are being put on by IVisit Media Inc out of California.”
We checked the Secretary of State records in California and found a Delaware corporation called iVisit Media Inc., domiciled in Los Angeles in October 2025.
Selwyn Gerber is a CPA and Chartered Accountant. He’s the secretary of this US subsidiary.
Which begs an obvious question: if iVisit Media Ltd is under a wind-up petition with HMRC in the UK, where is the money coming from to pay for the July 11th San Francisco event under the auspices of iVisit Media Inc.?
We certainly know Ed Pereira is spending money on boxing celebrities to endorse his July 11th event. Ed’s next magic act involved a fellow Uruguayan on a yacht.
Stylin’ and profilin’ with Sampson Lewkowicz
After promising to deliver over 130,000 spectators for Civic Center Plaza on July 11th, Ed Pereira rented a yacht at Pier 33 in San Francisco to deliver a press conference with some interesting boxing and global celebrities.
In his own press release, Ed Pereira reaffirmed his commitment to breaking the world’s attendance record for a boxing event.
A pioneering visionary and marketing genius, Ed Pereira, CEO of iVB says he’s targeting a world record audience of more than 132,135 fans (record set by Tony Zale vs Billy Pryor at Juneau Park in Milwaukee in 1941), the largest crowd ever assembled for a boxing event.
“This will be a show like the boxing world has never seen before,” said Pereira, “an event built for this city and its communities. San Francisco has always been a city that stands for something special, and on July 11, it will stand at the center of the boxing world.”
To do this, Ed Pereira assembled a team led by Sampson Lewkowicz and veteran California promoter Paco Damian. Ed swapped out ring announcer Lupe Contreras in favor of Jimmy Lennon Jr. and brought in Christy Martin and Sky Sports boxing personality Andy Clarke. ESPN host and former Broadway Boxing PBP man Brian Custer will have the call on July 11th.
Despite sounding Welsh, Ed Pereira — like Sampson Lewkowicz — is Uruguayan. A unique bond.
So, what kind of fight card would Sampson be able to assemble to attract 130,000 spectators in San Francisco on July 11th, head-to-head against Conor McGregor’s UFC return?
Anthony Olascuaga, the current WBO World Flyweight champion promoted by Japanese office Teiken Boxing Gym, will face Andy Dominguez from Larry Goldberg’s Boxing Insider Promotions in Atlantic City. Dominguez is managed by Vizhier Mooney, a former Nike PR executive for the Jordan Brand who is married to former Nike, Disney, and Fender executive Andy Mooney.
Remember the earlier promises that Oleksandr Usyk would appear at the July 11th event? Ed Pereira recently told Playbook Boxing to forget about it. Now he has a real main event Americans will care about.
“Everybody knows we had conversations with Usyk. We all know the truth. There are powers that be at the moment that have set the finances to a point where, realistically, it couldn’t make money.”
“We went into those conversations, it didn’t work out. It doesn’t mean that it won’t work out in the future. It just didn’t work out.”
“But one thing that I can guarantee is that we’re going to have more people in San Francisco watching boxing than [Anthony Joshua] will have in Riyadh watching him, and that’s the truth. And possibly more than Usyk will have in Egypt.”
“If you look at it on the American mindset, nobody knows who Usyk is in America but they definitely know who Olascuaga is.”
Instead of politically backtracking, Chris Gruwell visited Ed Pereira on his yacht presser and doubled down on his support for the July 11th event.
“These things don’t happen easily. A lot of things have to go right. You need a great promoter. You need a city opening its welcoming arms. I want to thank Ed Pereira and his team, who have been closely with our local Mayor Lurie, to bring what’s going to be a world-class event not just to California but to San Francisco. We’re really excited about that.”
This was music to Ed Pereira’s ears. His political allies absorbed his dream as their own. What wasn’t music to Ed’s ears was both Chris Mannix and Steve Kim calling this event boxing’s version of the Fyre Festival.
Multiple sources, on background, are claiming that money is already allocated for the fighter purses and that some of the bouts are allegedly paid fights (either by managers, investors, or other promoters). That is the good news.
Now comes the hard part: Who’s buying tickets for this event?
Following the money
Remember Mayor Lurie’s promise about tickets being free to the public for watching the July 11th event at Civic Center Plaza?
It turns out there are a lot of paid tickets for sale.
Not on Ticketmaster, but with UK vendor Ticket Tailor. Why are tickets being sold by a UK shop? Why isn’t Ticketmaster, AXS, or another vendor like SeatGeek being used?
According to Ticket Tailor’s website, they collect a percentage of fees and then redirect ticket purchases directly to the promoter’s payment processor. They do not handle refunds.
Both California state law (B & P statute 22507) and Athletic Commission rules & regulations are very clear about ticket refund protocols.
And the prices?
General admission tickets for standing range from $60 to $120, with a caveat.
"This ticket grants access to the General Admission Plaza Standing section.
Please note: Areas within the General Admission Standing section may have partially restricted views of the stage and event production.”
If you want to sit at Civic Center Plaza? $175 to start. Prices progressively ramp up into tiers of $650, $1500, $2500, $3500, and $6000.
In a recent IFL TV interview, Ed Pereira claims the most expensive tickets are moving. Focus on his careful wording.
“I know everybody likes to focus on the top end. Yes, we’ve got a $6000 ticket. By the way, they’re mostly, they’ve all pretty much gone. I think I’ve only got a few. The reason why it’s $6000 is you get to eat dinner in City Hall, right? So, that doesn’t happen every day. That’s like super unique. I love Wembley, it’s one of my favorites. I love the Principality, it’s my favorite stadium. But very rarely do people get a chance to love boxing and to eat in City Hall.”
Are the tickets gone because they were sold or removed for the purposes of VIP corporate sponsorship packages for sale?
Transparency is key here. According to Ticket Tailor’s latest seat maps, at least 35-40% of expensive tickets are now off the market.
Is Ed Pereira going to claim that the gate for his boxing event is in the ballpark of Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano? The proof will be in the pudding when he has to pay taxes on ticket sales to the California State Athletic Commission.
The proof on media rights revenue from YouTube (and now TikTok) will also come to the forefront, thanks to UK-based YouTube partner Brave Bison + Boxing News working together for Ed Pereira’s marketing boxing campaign. Show us the money!
Curiously, Ed Pereira is not the promoter of record for this event. Sampson Lewkowicz and Paco Damian are the listed promoters. Promoters are in charge of key financial reporting. And yet iVisit Media is listed on Ticket Tailor as the entity selling event tickets.
It is easy for keyboard warriors to dismiss this Ed Pereira event as a pie-in-the-sky operator. The problem is that apparently no one is looking out for customer and taxpayer rights.
Who is paying for security costs in the form of private contractors and overtime for San Francisco police officers?
How much money is required in the form of insurance/bond policies to run this huge show?
What city and state government contracts or tax credits are involved in publicly financing this event?
This July 11th event is quickly turning into one of the most politically-oriented combat sports events in quite some time. Don’t believe me? Look at the details of the VVIP package that Ed Pereira is marketing for $6000.
Who are these business leaders? Is Chris Gruwell going to make some calls to his clients to appear for this City Hall dinner?
Looking at the big picture
For 99.99% of boxing fans, it would be easy to mock this event. Dismiss it. Laugh at it. Scoff and smile.
The problem is that you cannot easily dismiss this story because of its political ramifications.
A major American city — next door to Silicon Valley — is going all-in on a fantastical adventure that is now going head-to-head against Conor McGregor’s UFC return.
This is a story about the raw branding and financial power of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Not one single Democrat leader in San Francisco politics protested against SELA or Saudi Arabian investment money. How quickly times have changed.
It was Ed Pereira’s proximity to SELA, Turki Alalshikh, and Dr. Rakan AlHarthy that got him through the door of San Francisco’s City Hall.
It is SF Mayor Daniel Lurie — with a 74% approval rating — putting his reputation on the line and willing to spend political capital backing this venture.
It is Chris Gruwell, top lobbyist for Joe Lacob and the 49ers, willing to be so visible and high-profile in his support for this sporting exhibition.
There are lifelong promoters in combat sports who could have only dreamed of ever garnering one-tenth of the political support that Ed Pereira has organized for his July 11th event.
Ed Pereira’s boxing venture has demonstrated a powerful principle about fight sport. Extensive knowledge of boxing is not required to market it. A savvy promoter just needs to know more than the counterparties he negotiates with.
Civic leaders are increasingly competing to host major sports events — and spending large sums of taxpayer cash to do so — because such spectacles generate headlines, tourism narratives, and social media visibility.
Ed Pereira has masterfully leveraged his political connections in San Francisco. They are all glued together like peanut butter & jelly. If Ed Pereira succeeds, they succeed. He will truly emerge as a case study in how perception and networking can generate legitimacy at astonishing speed.
If he fails, the powers that be will scramble for cover, and the focus will inevitably shift to the political figures who helped elevate this project in the first place.
If a concept sounds delightfully promising or maybe even too good to be true, politicians and lobbyists will bite — after all, it’s not their money.
And very few people are asking questions.
Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com.