It didn’t take long for Turki to complicate things even further by announcing one more change, removing TKO’s Dana White and Nick Khan from a promotional role in the fight.
Sela is “a Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) company” that Turki used to put on Terence Crawford vs. Israil Madrimov in Los Angeles and Anthony Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium.
The ensuing headlines were as brutal as the “articles” were devoid of content beyond repeating Turki’s tweet and restating obvious facts to answer the who, what, when, where, and why questions about Turki, Riyadh Season, Dana White, and TKO.
"Is [Matchroom Boxing] going to be involved in the [TKO] league? I doubt it. That's not the concept they have in mind," Hearn said. "But I'm also aware of the fighters the league are recruiting and I think it's going to be very different to people's immediate perception of how this is going to look. I don't think this is going to be the big names and Dana paying significant, overrated purses to get these guys because then there is going to be a war between UFC talent and boxers.
"In boxing, which is quite bizarre, the revenue around UFC events is more than the revenue around boxing events yet the [boxers] are paid 3-to-4 times more than the UFC guys. At some point, the UFC talent is going to look at it and go, 'Alright Dana, you are now paying these fighters $3 or $4 million dollars for some defense of their world title and we are getting half a million to have a war in a sold-out arena with massive pay-per-view numbers.' So, it's going to be very interesting."
I think Hearn is over-estimating the organizational abilities of UFC fighters, but he may be correct to not worry overmuch about the Turki Alalshikh-TKO alliance (don’t call it TKO Boxing!) will mean for a boxing promoter such as himself.
Campbell also speculates that the split between Turki and TKO arose from Dana White’s negative comments about holding fights in stadiums, as per Turki’s original announcement of the fight taking place at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
Zach and I recently talked about the stadium shell game with TKO Boxing on our latest podcast:
How do they do it? How is UFC getting customers to pay MSG-level fight prices at arenas across the world for matchmaking that, until recently, was absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel in terms of fight quality?
But there’s another rumor swirling that strikes me as the more likely culprit, and a much more significant explanation for whatever split that currently exists with Turki and TKO.
Given that only one boxing pundit has discussed this story on social media and no one has published it on a “legitimate” news site, I’m going to put it behind the paywall so as not to alarm and confuse any of our free readers and maintain the highest journalistic standards.
I’d heard this rumor from multiple sources before Fred Garvin, “Twitter's favourite drunk boxing poster,” went public with it and gave me an excuse to discuss.
Again, this is pure, unconfirmed speculation, but I thought my paying readers would enjoy hearing it and my thoughts on the possible implications, should it turn out to be true.
Salacious Boxing Rumour: The kids are saying that Turki and Dana met with Netflix but Turki started yelling at Netflix for allowing women in the meeting. The kids are claiming this is why the deal fell apart and now UFC is trying to patch things over for their own pitch to NFLX.
Garvin also has some thoughts about the remarkable silence from Dana White about the affair:
A week ago, combat sports social media was cluttered with triumph posts from Turki-TKO bootlickers celebrating the sheer inevitability of a TKO-Turki-Netflix alliance that would not only stream Canelo-Crawford at a huge profit to a huge global audience but would go on to monopolize boxing and destroy all the other promoters.
Because Dana White was believed to be in New York City, and Turki was believed to be heading there, and because Netflix’ C-Suite was in NYC for The Upfronts — advertising’s annual network beauty pageants — there were big expectations for a triumphant announcement from Netflix.
When Netflix didn’t say shit about boxing at their upfront, the TKO Boxing bulls went silent.
Then the rumors began swirling, all spinning variations on Garvin’s report: Turki reportedly said something that offended Netflix executives.
Garvin’s source (and one of mine) blamed Turki for a supposedly sexist outburst.
Another version of the story had Bela Bejaria asking, “If you’re promoting yourself as this great boxing financier, and you have a piece of DAZN, what do you need us for?”
The one connection all these rumors have? They appear to place TKO executives Nick Khan and Dana White in the Netflix meeting alongside Turki Alalshikh.
If these rumors are true, I have to wonder why TKO’s big bosses and master negotiators, Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro, weren’t there.
