UKC

I know that money talks but this just seems ridiculous.

Two British guys fighting to unify the heavyweight championship of the world. Surely Wembley or another big UK area would have been perfect for this.

Fans having to travel half way round the world and there is hardly a rich history of boxing in Saudi Arabia, Vegas would have made more sense. 

Money talks. It does seem ridiculous though, but then there wasn't a lot of boxing history in Kinshasa either before 1974. Is it even gonna happen though? I have my doubts. The promotion of heavyweight boxing has been ridiculous for decades. UFC puts then to shame.

They don't care about fans anymore - only sponsorship, PPV tele money and advertising revenue.  Fans ready to pay for seats in the venue are numerous enough to be replaceable should people decide to boycott an event.  Just look at the plans for the European Super League for an example of how little these large businesses care about fans.  

I was just thinking the same. Saw "When We were Kings" on TV at the weekend - I'm no boxing fan, but what an extraordinary and compelling piece of documentary film-making.

Blame AJ and Fury. They want X amount of millions. Likely to be like 50 and the only people who are willing to stump it up are the  Saudi's unsurprisingly. Nobody in the UK is gonna pay that sort of money for the fight. So what would you rather?

It didn't happen. 

It happens in the states at 5am.

It happens in Saudi at UK time. 

Pretty sure it'd be in the UK if they only wanted 5million each. But they don't. 

I'd rather it didn't happen.

Yeah it does seem odd, like you say, money talks.

In an ideal world this would be going down at Wembley in front of 90k fans, but in this Covid world who knows when that will be possible? I’d rather see this thing go down wherever than not at all!

Vegas would make more sense yes, but just like wherever this is to be held in KSA, that was just a desert with no boxing history in the not too distant past. 

Madison Square Garden would be the dream venue for me history wise, but AJ mightn’t be keen (lost to Ruiz there) and Fury’s never fought there (he says he has, but he hasn’t, he fought in the theatre at msq, a smaller venue in the same building. Not the same thing) so maybe not!

ultimately they are taking part in prize-fighting. Many combat sport athletes have serious long term health issues and very rarely some even die from injuries sustained in fights. I struggle with the guilt of enjoying it so much. So fair play to them, I fully support them getting every last penny they can. 

That said I believe it's a very deliberate attempt by the Saudis to effectively bribe loads of sports into being hosted so they get good press and people dont focus on the human right's abuses etc. 

. I struggle with the guilt of enjoying it so much.

That's a start, at least.

MSG or anywhere in the states would be bizarre as it'd be 5am UK time unless they moved it to the middle of the day. Which they wouldn't due to PPV sales. It's not ideal that the biggest heavyweight fight for some time, which happens to feature 2 British fighters isnt in Britain but at least it'll be on at a reasonable time if it's in Saudi. 

Completely agree that they’re trying to sportswash the image of the country, but does it work?

If I watch the fight I’ll see a crowd of only men (reminding me that women are treated as second class citizens and that it’s not a nice place) and not a single pint in hand (reminding me that I’d never want to go there).

If I was getting punched in the head for a living I too would pick wherever was paying me the most. Their careers are too short and dangerous to take an ethical stance on where they fight.

Yeah I agree.  

In the end it's a no brainer for the promoters to hold it there... The Garden or Vegas would make it a silly time in the UK, plus neither fighter has a significant fan base over there.  Wembley or some other Stadium over here may not be possible soon enough due to Covid, and they can't risk booking a huge venue like that then not being able to fill it.

So that leaves Saudi Arabia, who delivered on all the promises for the last AJ fight, built a nice venue and impressed the promoters last time who will hold the fight at a time good for UK audiences and and have offered up $150 million dollars to boot.

Yes, KSA has some human rights issues, but they're also an ally of the west in that region and they alone account for roughly a billion pounds worth of arms sales a year to the uk, so I'm not going to criticise holding a boxing match there, that's the tip of the iceberg.

Some human rights issues! The very essence of completely unacceptable sport-washing.

So holding a boxing match in KSA is completely unacceptable, yet selling a billion pounds of arms per year to them and hosting the Crown Prince at Buckingham Palace is fine?

This isn't like holding it in Apartheid era South Africa, or Nazi Germany, we have no sanctions against KSA. Like it or not the U.K. is already in bed with the Saudis and this boxing match is the least of our concerns.

If my career was one requiring me to train obsessively for years, being hurt - possibly quite seriously, had a minuscule chance of reaching the point of earning serious money, had a very short span and could result in life-changing injury, I too would want to earn as much as humanly possible. 

I don’t “blame” either of them for accepting the highest purse on offer. Your post seems to imply a duty for the fighters to earn less in favour of some vague notion of doing the “right” thing. Unless I’ve misunderstood you, of course. 

No it doesnt imply that at all, least I didn't intend to. I'm fine with it being in Saudi. Why on earth would 2 world champions fighting in possibly the biggest boxing match ever do it for the same sort of money Derek Chisora probably made to fight Parker the other week. They deserve the biggest purse and will have to fight somewhere that will pay it as nobody in the pandemic ridden UK is stumping up  100m for a boxing match atm. They are both in their prime as well so the sooner the better.