What do boxing fans think about His Excellency Turki Al Sheikh

[Kovalev's "Man Bag"]

A participation trophy refers to getting an award just for showing up regardless of how you do. Like showing up for a tournament and everybody including last place gets a trophy. You don't use that term when you give a guy a tough fight, especially when that guy is considered number 1

It's applicable. In boxing there's a winner and then there's a loser (2nd place aka last place). Two participants and one of them came up short, hence, he participated but didn't win. Otherwise he'd be called a winner. Fury wasn't rated #1 at the time of the bout. Usyk was and still is since he's the only unified champ in the division and the lineal champion.

 

[Blastbeat]

in terms of the Double Excellent Turkey (as Propa Boxing likes to say), i think he's genuinely a fan of combat sports. If i remember right, he mentioned his favorite boxers were Larry Holmes and Roberto Duran. he also doesnt want to put on any more YouTube fights which is a relief. i appreciate how assertive he is in getting big fights made.

however, there's the issue of Saudi politics and sportswashing which has been brought up frequently. all these fights are definitely a distraction of sorts from some of the horrible shit going on in Saudi Arabia, slavery being one of them.

im extremely conflicted about all of it. piracy and free streams for me.

 

[spinup]

The majority of people that thought Ngannou won were diehard MMA fans that don't know how to score boxing matches.

That includes 33.3333% of the judges.

 

[WklySportsMemes]

He's making the fights that weren't being made before, but if this keeps up we'll get to a point when big fights will be even rarer due to boxers holding out for Saudi money. I'm not gonna get into Saudi politics because this is a boxing forum.

Thats what I've been thinking lately.
How long will he have an open piggy bank from the Prince????
When will their sports marketing campaign end???
What metric are they looking to move to determine if their master plan is working????

Its good for boxing fans in the interim if they keep putting on shows regularly.

But it honestly creates an atmosphere where it makes financial sense for guys like Benavidez, AJ, Canelo, Crawford, Fury, Bivol, Biev, Monster, Tank, Haney, Francis, & Stevenson to hold out these ridiculous paydays. I can't fault them.

I bet both Crawford & Spence are saying dam if only we held out for like another half a year...lol


The only thing that creeps me out is the pundits & the promoters bending knees and going overboard with the royal title stuff. Like it's really creepy to keep addressing mortal men by all these elaborate titles. Its so forced and off putting. Like everytime they mention Turkey or the Prince they have to go into paragraphs of how pure and noble they are. As an American it really is a culture shock to see how people react to royal status.

I did think what Turkey said about Oscar was hilarious & as long as he's not a tyrant or bully I can dig his banter. As long as he can take it back. I just always worry that royals have a completely different public persona than they do when the cameras go down.

 

[Kovalev's "Man Bag"]

That includes 33.3333% of the judges.

That's not the majority though. It literally represents a single judge that got it wrong. The other two official judges overruled his score. Not to mention there's always that 1 weird card in boxing anyway. We saw the same thing happen in the Usyk vs Joshua rematch and a million other high profile fights.

 

[Levi_]

The idea of him "getting bored" with it is missing the boat by a mile; this is much bigger than that. SA is on a trek to normalize relations with the world and to be a bigger player; that's why they were trying to normalize relations with Israel before the war.

Attracting sporting events is one of their strategies which has had mixed results. Other sports are taking a harder ethical look at SA and are not always biting (e.g. the golf tournament).

Their pockets are deep enough to keep this up for a long time if they feel it is worthwhile. Fighters have a wedge between now and then to negotiate for better money in the US, and I think that is a good thing.