The chairman of the General Entertainment Authority in Saudi Arabia has been organising some of the most highly anticipated fights.
Politics in boxing has often stopped major fights from taking place. Negotiations between heavyweight boxers like Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury have collapsed when promoters could not agree on the division of earnings from ticket sales and pay-per-view revenue.
Promoters normally earn a percentage of a fighter’s earnings, which means if their fighter receives a smaller share, the promoter also earns less.
However, Saudi adviser Turki Alalshikh has changed the game by allowing fighters to work directly with him without needing any promoters.
As a result, boxers are being paid more. Fighters no longer need to share a percentage of earnings with their promoter and promoters do not have to spend their own money on promoting fighters because Alalshikh has accepted that responsibility.
Alalshikh has said that nostalgia was one of the key reasons behind his involvement in boxing.
He told DAZN Boxing: “In the 1970s and at the beginning of the 1980s, boxing was the number one sport in the world and now it’s fourteenth. I’m very disappointed.
“There is a problem with the promoters as they do not want to make the strongest fights because it costs a lot of money,” he added.
Alalshikh has already had a positive impact on the sport. In 2024 he hosted three major boxing events in Saudi Arabia, including two undisputed heavyweight championship fights between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk and a fight between undisputed light-heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev and Russian compatriot Dmitry Bivol.
All of the fighters entered their matchups with undefeated records.
He has also shared his plans to produce one of the biggest fights in boxing between pound for pound number one boxer Terence Crawford and Mexican legend Canelo Alvarez.
British Commonwealth featherweight champion Masood Abdullah is signed to promoter Frank Warren, who works closely with Alalshikh. He had high praise for the chairman.
“It’s great what he’s doing for the sport, he’s putting the biggest fights together and attracting more attention to the sport,” he said.
