On 13 September, Terence Crawford solidified his status as a great fighter with a hard-fought, unanimous decision victory over Canelo Álvarez at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
The event was conceived, financed, and marketed by Turki al-Sheikh, the chairman of the Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority, and Dana White, the president and CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). It was to act as a foundation stone for their plan to make Zuffa Boxing, a company controlled by interests they represent, the dominant force in professional boxing.
Boxing’s last “golden age” was orchestrated by HBO Sports. For decades, the cable giant delivered fights that fans wanted to see. Overall, the network conducted itself as though it had a fiduciary duty to the sport. It understood that, if boxing thrived, then its boxing franchise would too.
HBO’s boxing program began to decline with the 2000 departure of Seth Abraham and Lou DiBella, who had been its primary architects. Ultimately, boxing declined with it. The sport moved away from a self-sustaining business model. Instead of recouping costs through ticket sales, license fees, pay-per-view buys and other fight-generated revenue, big-time boxing became reliant on “big losers”.
The investment firm of Waddell & Reed lost a reported $400m (£296.8) investing in Premier Boxing Champions (PBC). DAZN has lost a reported $7bn (£5.2bn) since its inception, a good chunk of that attributable to its boxing program. ESPN kept Top Rank afloat for eight years with a generous annual rights payment. But the network was unable to monetize boxing the way it hoped to and their agreement expired earlier this year. The Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority has poured an incalculable sum into a boxing program that has been swimming in red ink since its inception.
Most professional sports franchises in America are looked upon as community assets. There are times when boxing seems like an unwanted stepchild. Showtime followed HBO out of the boxing business. The sport’s major promoters in the United States are suffering. Mid-level promoters are falling by the wayside. There are questions as to how long PBC – once thought to be on the verge of “taking over” boxing – will survive. Top Rank is scrambling to put together deals with one or more platforms that will enable it to continue on a diminished basis.
The Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority (GEA) and Sheikh stepped into that void.
In recent years, the GEA has invested heavily in sports. It changed the economics of professional golf through creation of the LIV golf tour and has hosted significant competitions in events ranging from Formula One automobile racing to mixed martial arts. More significantly, Saudi Arabia has been designated as the host country for the 2034 Fifa World Cup.
The first boxing card of note in Saudi Arabia was contested in 2018 when Callum Smith knocked out George Groves and Chris Eubank Jr stopped JJ McDonagh. The following year, Riyadh Season was launched and the fights got bigger. Anthony Joshua regained his heavyweight belts in Riyadh by decision over Andy Ruiz. Eight months after that in Jeddah, Joshua fell victim to Oleksandr Usyk in Usyk-Joshua II. More fights in the Kingdom involving Usyk, Joshua, Tyson Fury, Deontay Wilder and other top heavyweights followed. Major bouts in lighter weight classes were added to the mix.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media in the United States has stopped covering boxing in a serious way, which has enabled the Saudi juggernaut to control the narrative.
Further to that end, in November 2024, Sheikh purchased the Ring magazine, which gives him a platform for his message as well as control over the Ring’s championship belts and rankings. Saudi interests have also purchased a billion-dollar equity stake in Dazn, which gives them input regarding that platform’s flow of boxing content to consumers.
And dissenting voices are often stifled. Critics of the Saudi boxing program have been denied credentials to cover events. Articles and video content have been altered or pulled down in their entirety by some sites because of concern that Saudi interests might be or were offended.
This is the environment in which the latest initiative in the Saudi boxing program – Zuffa Boxing – has been launched.
Let’s look at the players.
TKO Group Holdings is a sports and entertainment company whose vast portfolio includes the UFC and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).
Sela is a live-experiences and recreational company owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Its managing director and CEO - Dr Rakan Alharthy - is an ally of Sheikh and is also close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
On 5 March 2025, a press release heralded the launch of a multi-year boxing promotional partnership between Sela and TKO under Sheikh’s leadership.
“This is a strategic opportunity to reimagine the sport of boxing globally,” TKO president and COO Mark Shapiro declared.
There was ambitious talk of a league that would divide 200 of the best men boxers in the world (women weren’t included in the plan) into 12 weight classes. TKO would serve as managing partner for the venture and provide day-to-day operational expertise and management under the guidance of Dana White and WWE president Nick Khan.
“You know the format,” White told the Ring. “Everybody knows the format. The best fight the best. You work your way up the rankings. And once somebody breaks into the top five - there’s no question who the best five guys in the world are in each weight class - they fight it out. And once somebody holds that belt, you don’t need three [sanctioning body] letters in front of the belt. Whoever has that belt is the best in the world in that weight class. It’s a very simple model.”
Fighters could be dropped by the league and replaced by new talent as circumstances warranted.
But there was a hitch. The best fighters in the world (as well as their promoters and managers) were reluctant to commit to a venture that required them to cede control over career decisions to Sheikh and White. Thus, TKO shifted its focus from established stars to “exciting young prospects” who would fight for “Ring” belts rather than traditional sanctioning-body titles.
Mark Shapiro spelled out the plan on an 6 August 2025 earnings call with analysts:
(1) The boxing promotional company will be called “Zuffa Boxing” and is a joint venture between TKO Holdings, the Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority, and Sela.
(2) Zuffa Boxing will promote approximately 12 “league” fight cards annually for a period of five years.
(3) In addition, TKO will work with Sheikh to promote several super-fights (such as Canelo-Crawford) each year.
(4) The league fights and super-fights will be separate businesses.
(5) TKO will have no funding obligation with regard to any of the fights and will receive a $10m annual management fee for its services. In addition, with regard to each superfight, TKO will be paid fees to negotiate media rights, sell hospitality packages, and provide other services that are likely to bring TKO an additional $10m per event.
An inside source says that, although it was left unsaid, Sela owns 60% of Zuffa Boxing and TKO owns 40%.
“I will build stars, put on great fights,” Dana White told Vegas PBS. “And then these guys will graduate and fight with Sheikh Turki.”
Zuffa Boxing has been designed to run in the black. Canelo-Crawford – its first promotion – was expected to lose tens of millions of dollars because of the enormous purses paid to the main event fighters. But a well-placed source says that the Saudi Public Investment Fund committed to underwriting that loss. And remember; UFC ran in the red in its formative years. Canelo-Crawford was constructed to establish the Zuffa Boxing brand in the public mind and, equally important, in the collective mind of networks and potential corporate sponsors.
There was a time when Canelo and Sheikh were at odds. Sheikh had wanted Canelo to commit to fighting Crawford under the Riyadh Season banner in February 2025 and declared, “I give him the offer. If he is smart, he will accept it.”
Canelo didn’t accept it and instead responded, “I respect everybody but I don’t like the way he [Sheikh] talks. It’s his problem, not my problem. I didn’t ask for a fight. They wanted to meet with me and see about the fight with Crawford. I said, ‘Look, after September 14 [when I fight Edgar Berlanga], we can talk. But not right now.’”
That earned a harsh rejoinder from Sheikh, who posted on X, “I heard what Canelo said, that he respects me but doesn’t like the way we do business. As for him respecting me, it doesn’t matter to me if he does or not. As for the way I do business, I know why he doesn’t like it because I only target big fights at fair prices, so of course anyone who likes easy fights won’t like that. Also, I’m not the one who’s afraid of fighting [David] Benavidez or Crawford.”
Then circumstances changed. In December 2024, Richard Schaefer (who built Golden Boy Promotions and Oscar De La Hoya’s financial portfolio before a falling out between them) became Canelo’s business manager. The first thing Schaefer did was set up a meeting with Canelo and Sheikh to iron out the differences between them. A four-fight deal announced by Sheikh on 6 February resulted.
The numbers were staggering. A reliable source says that Canelo’s compensation was styled as fight purse money, payment for serving as a Riyadh Season “ambassador”, and other services. Reports that he was paid $50m to fight William Scull in Riyadh on 3 May and $100m to face Crawford are a bit high. The same is believed to be true of Crawford’s reported $50m purse to fight Canelo. But Sheikh was on the mark when he called Canelo-Crawford “the most expensive boxing contract ever”.
Then there was a blip. Canelo-Scull went poorly. The event was sparsely attended. Pay-per-view sales were poor. And the fight was dreadful. Canelo won a unanimous decision and said afterward, “He just came to survive. For me, that’s a boring fight when a fighter doesn’t try to win. I hate those kind of fighters.”
But the seed for bigger things had been planted. And immediately after the bout, Sheikh announced that Canelo-Crawford would be TKO’s first official boxing event.
However, not all the ducks had been lined up. And a period of chaos followed.
Canelo likes to fight on the Saturday of Mexican Independence Day Weekend, which this year was on 13 September. But UFC had an event (Noche UFC: Lopes v Silva) scheduled for 13 September. And Dana White preferred that Canelo-Crawford take place at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on 12 September. That alienated Canelo, who said that he wouldn’t play second fiddle to anyone on Mexican Independence Day Weekend.
Complicating matters, the UNLV football team had a home game against Idaho State scheduled for 13 September at Allegiant Field.
Sheikh sided with Canelo and, on 18 May, told the Ring that (1) Canelo-Crawford would be on 13 September, not 12 September; (2) the event would be promoted by Sela for Riyadh Season, not TKO; and (3) the fight would be moved from Allegiant Field to either Los Angeles, New York or another site in Las Vegas. He also said that the fight would be on Dazn PPV, not (as previously speculated) on Netflix.
Eventually, things got sorted out.
Properly incentivized, UNLV and Idaho State agreed to reschedule their game as a 23 August season opener. A reliable source says that UNLV was paid $1.75m and Idaho State received $1.5m for the switch. Noche UFC: Lopes v Silva was moved up by several hours so as to not conflict with Canelo-Crawford. On 8 June, Sheikh posted, “My brother Dana will promote [Canelo-Crawford]. It is the fight of Riyadh Season, and we have a deal with TKO to promote it and it will be the biggest fight in boxing.” Two days later, Sheikh announced that the event would stream on Netflix.
White moved quickly to put his imprimatur on Canelo-Crawford. One of the first things he did was install UFC’s lead commentator Jon Anik (who hadn’t called a boxing match since 2008) as the blow-by-blow commentator. Sheikh had been leaning toward the selection of Jim Lampley.
The marketing effort supporting the fight was extensive. But there were some hiccups.
For 16 years, Canelo’s fights had been shown for free on Mexican television. But the promotion had sold worldwide rights to Netflix, which wanted the fight exclusively on Netflix in Mexico. Initially, Canelo took the position, “If it’s not on free television in Mexico, I won’t fight.” Eventually he relented.
A planned fight-week BoxRaw Sparring Club event in Las Vegas in conjunction with the Ring was cancelled when Nevada Athletic Commission executive director Jeff Mullen made it clear that the “sparring” session would face far more stringent regulation in Sin City than a 11 July BoxRaw event had in New York.
“We’re not having what happened in New York,” an unnamed NSAC regulator told journalist Lance Pugmire. “These are fights, not sparring. And they would require all of our safety protocols to be in place.”
The Fontainebleau paid a generous site fee for the privilege of being the official fight week hotel. There were no discount room rates for the media (who were scattered at hotels throughout Las Vegas). Nor was there an active on-site media center or transportation for the media to attend various events such as the final pre-fight press conference and ceremonial weigh-in (both of which were held at T-Mobile Arena) or the fight itself.
On Monday, social media was buzzing when Dana White said that he would bar World Boxing Council president Mauricio Sulaiman from entering the ring after the fight to present the WBC championship belt to the winner. In response, Sulaiman posted, “You better have 2-3 security guards in the corner trying to stop me, because I will enter that ring to place the belt on the winner.”
“Dana is running this like he runs a UFC event,” one of the major players on site noted. “He’s controlling every aspect of the promotion and imposing his will on everything that matters to him.”
There were times when Canelo balked. He resisted a demand that he attend a media day event on Wednesday. UFC fighters don’t refuse to appear at media day sessions. With Canelo absent, neither Sheikh or White were there either and the session was sparsely attended.
Crawford dutifully appeared and took questions for 13 minutes. Asked about a claim by UFC lightweight champion Ilia Topuria that, were the two men to box, he’d knock Crawford out in the first round, Terence responded, “A lot of the UFC guys, they drink a lot. So I don’t pay attention to what they say.”
Both Canelo and Crawford later declined to attend a previously scheduled “open workout”.
The final pre-fight press conference was held at 6pm on Thursday. Despite White’s disdain for the world sanctioning bodies, Canelo displayed his six championship belts (including his “Ring” belt) on the table in front of him. Sheikh spoke briefly and ended his remarks with, “I want to see Saturday, blood, smashing faces.”
There were moments when the tension between Sheikh and White seemed palpable. Two men with large egos, both of whom are used to having complete control.
Max Kellerman (part of the Netflix commentating team) praised White as “the greatest combat sports promoter in my lifetime” and heaped equally lavish encomia on Nick Khan and Sheikh for “fixing” (as in repairing) boxing, which Kellerman said was “not as popular as it used to be”.
Canelo (who lives by the mantra “boxing is life”) was doing a slow burn. Finally, he interrupted.
“Hey, Max. Boxing has always been big. Don’t say boxing is not big enough. Boxing is big. I respect that other sport [UFC]. But boxing is boxing.”
To which Crawford added approvingly, “No lies.”
Tickets for the fight had gone on sale on 17 July and were selling on Ticketmaster a day later at prices ranging from $315 to $12,835. The promotion fueled talk of massive demand. But by Thursday of fight week, prices had dropped significantly on the resale market, in some instances to less than 50% of face value. Allegiant Stadium filled up nicely on fight night with an announced attendance of 70,482 (the second largest attendance ever for an indoor fight in the United States).
The crowd, as expected, was heavily pro-Canelo. In a departure from the norm, no national anthems were played. That offended Canelo, particularly in light of the fact that this was Mexican Independence Day weekend.
Crawford fought well. Canelo didn’t. The judges’ scorecards (116-112, 115-113, 115-113 for Crawford) were on the mark.
The fight solidified Crawford’s status as a great fighter. But it will be harder for the powers that be to monetize him than it has been to monetize Canelo. In that vein, one might note that neither White or Sheikh attended the post-fight press conference.
Meanwhile, Canelo-Crawford was an important step toward establishing the Zuffa Boxing brand.
Traditional promoters in the United States have been imploding. Earlier this year, Dana White declared, “I think the sport of boxing is so broken that it needs to be built from the ground up again.”
Jake Paul has shown that there’s a market for boxing. If his scheduled 14 November encounter with Gervonta Davis proceeds as planned, he will have fought three times in 12 months (the first two being against Mike Tyson and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr). Those fights will have been watched by more people and, with the exception of Canelo, Paul will have made more money than any other fighter in boxing during that period. For better or worse, he has demonstrated conclusively that, in today’s world, a fighter doesn’t have to be world-class to be a huge draw.
Zuffa Boxing might promote two or three big events featuring elite fighters each year. But like UFC, it will be about creating and marketing a brand. It won’t necessarily have the best fighters. But UFC might not have the world’s best MMA combatants either. It’s possible that there are dozens of MMA fighters who are better than UFC’s champions. We just don’t know who they are.
Zuffa Boxing will try to reset the market and promote boxing with a formula similar to the one it uses for UFC. What it needs now is a broadcast deal to monetize its venture. The two prime attractions in TKO’s portfolio – WWE and UFC – recently signed huge network contracts.
On 6 August, TKO and ESPN announced a deal that calls for Wrestlemania, Summerslam, Royal Rumble, and several other WWE premium events to be seen exclusively in the United States on various ESPN platforms beginning next year. Five days later, TKO and Paramount announced that, starting in 2026, Paramount will be the exclusive home for all UFC events in the United States pursuant to a seven-year contract with an average (but backloaded) annual license fee of $1.1bn (£816.3m). Paramount will distribute all 13 of UFC’s “marquee numbered events” and 30 “Fight Nights” annually on Paramount+ with some of the numbered events being simulcast on CBS.
Paramount and TKO have been reported as being close to an agreement to televise and stream Zuffa Boxing on one or more Paramount platforms. Riyadh Season fights and Ring events would continue on a separate track independent of the league and be available on DAZN and other outlets.
Canelo-Crawford might have been the final push that puts a network deal for Zuffa Boxing place. The Netflix numbers for the fight fell far short of the numbers for Tyson-Paul (which peaked at 60m households with more than 108m viewers worldwide). According to a 15 September Netflix post, Canelo-Crawford drew a total of 41m global viewers. Still, that’s a lot of viewers.
Earlier this year, Sheikh posted on X, “This league is a project not against anyone. It is a project that will have space in the market and we will still see the four belts and the commissions and the promoters. The market is huge and no one can delete anyone from this market. I understand the panic in the market because there are a lot of companies and a lot of promoters. [But] the relationship between Riyadh Season and the relationship between Ring Magazine and the promoters will continue for at least one or two years. This depends on their reactions and what are the options that they will give us. If it is good for us, we will do it.”
But “one or two years” sends an ominous message. Dana White has said that he has “no interest” in Zuffa Boxing working with the world sanctioning bodies and other promoters. And while Sheikh has cast himself as the savior of boxing, he now appears to be intent upon controlling the sport and (understandably) making money in the process.
That leads to the question of whether Zuffa Boxing will be good for fighters in the long run.
UFC currently pays 17-to-20% of its revenue to combatants. In the NFL and NBA, the players receive 50%. In boxing at the elite level, the number is often in the neighborhood of 80%.
Moreover, UFC recently paid $375m to settle an antitrust lawsuit brought against it by UFC fighters who alleged that they had been illegally exploited by the company. That doesn’t sound like an organization that puts fighters first.
An early fighter contract (which a representative of Sheikh now says was a draft) was circulated in March of this year. The terms were not fighter friendly. Fighters who signed up would be paid $5,000 within three days of signing but had to commit to a three-year term subsequent to their first bout or, absent a bout, for two years following their signing. Each fighter would be guaranteed at least one fight every five months beginning with their first fight, although Zuffa Boxing would make a “good-faith effort” to give each fighter the opportunity to participate in as many as four fights during the first year. Purses would depend on a fighter’s “ranking” within the company and would range from $20,000 for a ten-round bout by an unranked fighter to $750,000 for a fighter who was defending a company championship.
One problem with this proposal is that it’s in clear violation of the Professional Boxer Health and Safety Act, often referred to jointly with the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act (both publicly and in this article) as The Ali Act.
To deal with this obstacle, the parties controlling Zuffa Boxing hired lobbyists who have spearheaded the introduction of legislation in Congress that would amend the act. Donald Trump has signaled his support for the legislation which is almost certain to pass.
A UFC spokesperson told ESPN that the proposed changes are designed to “enhance” the Ali Act by giving fighters “more opportunities”. In truth, the proposed legislation would eliminate several provisions now in place that are designed to protect fighters’ interests. The Ali Act is rarely, if ever, enforced by the government. But it does influence the conduct of some promoters and can be a valuable tool in private litigation.
Patrick English is an attorney who has devoted much of his professional life to boxing and was heavily involved in the drafting of Professional Boxer Health and Safety Act and the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act.
English is blunt in saying, “The proposed Act betrays fighters. The clear intent is to favor a single promotional entity. The bill was substantially drafted by lobbyists for that entity, to wit Zuffa and its various subdivisions.”
More specifically, the proposed amendments would allow for the creation of “unified boxing organizations” (UBOs) which are described in the proposed legislation as an “alternative system for compliance with the requirements of the Act”. Zuffa Boxing, by virtue of its capitalization and organization, could qualify as a UBO. Most promoters couldn’t.
The Ali Act was intended to create, among other things, a firewall between ratings organizations, managers and promoters. The proposed amendment destroys that firewall. If the Act is amended, Zuffa Boxing will be able to assume the roles of sanctioning body, manager and promoter.
The original Act requires that promoters make certain financial disclosures to fighters and governing athletic commissions. If the proposed changes become law, fighters would be in the dark as to how much revenue promoters are receiving in conjunction with their fights.
The proposed amendments would eliminate the Ali Act’s protection against “coercive contracts” imposed on fighters and allow UBOs to control both championships and rankings. Here, it’s important to remember that, under the draft Zuffa Boxing contract, fighters’ purses would be tied directly to championships and rankings. UBOs could also exclude boxers who have not signed a long-term contract with them from participating in any of their events.
Canelo Álvarez and Terence Crawford both enrolled for Vada testing three months prior to their fight. Vada (the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association) is boxing’s most reliable entity with regard to testing for illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Its testing is more comprehensive than that of its competitors. And unlike some testing agencies, Vada reports test results to each fighter’s camp, the promoter, and the governing state athletic commission.
The drug testing provisions provided for in the proposed amendments to the Ali Act are a sham. A UBO could set up its own PED-testing program and, if it chose, have results reported only to itself.
“The potential for the hiding of results,” English notes, “is obvious.”
Or phrased differently: How many times since UFC instituted its own PED-testing program has a UFC fight been pulled down or the outcome of a fight changed because of a positive PED test result?
There are several positives in the proposed legislation, but they’re minimal. The bill would require pay of at least $150 per round for all fighters and require all promoters and UBOs to secure a minimum of $25,000 in medical coverage for injuries sustained by a fighter during a match. But $25,000 won’t scratch the surface in the event of serious injury. By way of contrast, the New York State Athletic Commission requires a medical insurance policy that covers up to one million dollars for life-threatening brain injuries and $50,000 for everything else.
If Sheikh and his Saudi backers withdrew entirely from boxing tomorrow, traditional market forces would return to play. The proposed Ali Act amendments, if enacted into law, will change the landscape of boxing far into the future.
Meanwhile, without these amendments to the Ali Act, the Saudi boxing program might have to retrench. Multiple sources have told the Guardian that the unthinkable has happened: that the Saudi boxing program seems to have a cash flow problem and that some of the high-level players who came to Las Vegas during Canelo-Crawford fight week were there, not for the fight but to get paid for services rendered in the past. And they left still being owed money.
Sheikh has earned plaudits (and deservedly so) for financing important fights among today’s heavyweights as well as significant bouts in lighter weight divisions such as the title unification bouts between Arthur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol. As a result of these fights, a relatively small number of fighters and promoters have made an enormous amount of money. But that could change if competing promoters are marginalized or driven out of business as a result of Zuffa Boxing’s expanding tentacles.
Thus, it’s worth remembering what Canelo Álvarez said in an interview with the Ring earlier this year: “The next generation of fighters needs to understand that they must manage themselves and earn well. It’s not about risking your life in the ring for nothing. Many great fighters have ended up broke because all they cared about was throwing punches.”
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing - is available here. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor - induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
