Turki Alalshikh is undoubtedly one of the most prevalent non-fighter names in the boxing scene today, but behind his generosity, manifested by steep guarantees for fighters, and his efforts to stage some of the biggest fights in boxing, the Saudi Arabian mogul’s influence appears to be subtly affecting boxing in a more insidious manner.
BoxRec, well known for being the top recordkeeping boxing website on the world wide web, has undergone a particular change over the past few months; the removal of every single record pertaining to the World Boxing Association’s (WBA). This includes every single fight involving an iteration of the WBA’s titles, but also every record that kept track of who held which title, and the titles itself have been completely removed from the website.
This is a major development given the WBA still exists and operates as any of the other four main sanctioning bodies, clearly indicating there is a dispute of some kind between BoxRec and WBA that has led to these changes. The other three sanctioning bodies, the WBC, WBO and the IBF, are still present on the website, as well as other minor sanctioning bodies such as the International Boxing Organization (IBO) and the World Boxing Federation (WBF).
This alleged dispute, however, does not mean there is a direct conflict between the WBA and BoxRec. Rather, the dispute might stem between BoxRec and Turki Alalshikh given BoxingScene’s Thomas Hauser reported that BoxRec’s owner, Thomas Sheppard, had declined to sell the website to “Saudi interests”, which reportedly led to a “wave of hostile activity”.
“Hostile activity” can have a number of meanings, but it could refer in this instance to alleged sabotage from the most affluent Saudi official to be immersed in boxing; General Entertainment Authority (GEA) chairman Turki Alalshikh.
Turki Alalshikh, known for using the event-driven and state-funded Riyadh Season to stage spectacular boxing events in and outside of Saudi Arabia, has sponsored several notable fight cards including the 5 vs 5: Matchroom vs Queensberry card, the May 18th Riyadh card headlined by Oleksandr Usyk (22-0, 14 KO’s) and Tyson Fury (34-1-1, 24 KO’s), and the upcoming September 18th Wembley card which will see former world champion Anthony Joshua (28-3, 25 KO’s) face IBF heavyweight (200+ lbs) champion Daniel Dubois (21-2, 20 KO’s) for his title.
This year, Riyadh Season struck a partnership agreement with both Golden Boy Promotions and Top Rank, to further allow them to extend their influence in boxing.
But Alalshikh’s influence does not extend to boxing alone, with Riyadh Season also having dabbled in other sports such as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) through the UFC―which led to a very public appearance from Alalshikh at UFC 306 alongside WBA super welterweight (154 lbs) champion Terence Crawford (41-0, 31 KO’s).
It is a possibility that Alalshikh applied pressure in a manner that made BoxRec remove the WBA from its website. The recent news of boxing media outlet Seconds Out having experienced behind-the-scenes issues with Riyadh Season that prevents them from covering the September 21st Joshua-Dubois card shows Alalshikh is able to touch different layers of the boxing industry.
According to the same article by Thomas Hauser, Turki Alalshikh is also implicated in having paid the WBA and WBC millions―respectively $1,500,000 and $2,000,000―in “sponsorship fees”, and the chairman has allegedly depicted behavior that shows him to be more easily affronted when his wishes are denied or rejected.
While the possibility that BoxRec’s removal of the WBA on their site is completely unrelated to Turki Alalshikh or Riyadh Season, there certainly appears to be a lot of smoke pertaining to this issue―and as the ancient adage goes, “where there is smoke, there is fire”.
