Four-time super-middleweight world champion Carl Froch has shared his thoughts on this week’s rumours that Turki Al-Alshikh is plotting to purchase each of the major promotions within boxing. Once purchased, the Saudi catalyst is hoping to form his own league, similar to that of the UFC, to ensure that the biggest possible fights take place, but Froch had his doubts.
The involvement of Al-Alshikh over the last nine months has marked a turning point in the sport, as major events seem to be happening on a regular basis and the fights that seemed difficult to make become official at the touch of a button.
Al-Alshikh is now being linked to an unprecedented move that would completely change the foundations of professional boxing, introducing a league that would likely result in one champion per division and force boxing’s biggest stars to fight one another.
Although, on his YouTube channel, Carl Froch declared his belief that the ego’s and passion of key figures within the sport make this bid seem extremely unrealistic – regardless if the money involved in the supposed deal.
“Absolutely, it would [change the landscape of boxing]. How much money has he got? Five billion! It’s just some serious Bunsen burner [money]. Would Oscar De La Hoya, Al Haymon, Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn sell their business in boxing? I think that they would be a part of something that could be bigger and they could all maybe agree if the money is right, and it sounds right at five billion quid.
“Oscar De La Hoya is doing his own thing, Eddie Hearn loves boxing and he is in the game because he is passionate about it. Without boxing, without being a boxing promoter, what is Eddie Hearn? What has he got? It is his identity, his passion in the sport.
“Going away, retiring and sailing off into the sunset, I could settle down and relax and not work again and put my pipe and slippers on, it’s not happening. I still want to be involved in the boxing, I am still busy with my properties, I have got my kids, I don’t think so. I don’t think that it is realistic that everybody is going to sell their business’.
“Do I like the idea? It is almost like Turki Al-Alshikh is trying to be the next Dana White, but would boxing work as a league? The heavyweights make so much money, individual people in boxing make the bigger money, look at Canelo Alvarez and Floyd Mayweather for example – making far more than everybody else. If everyone was in one pot, I don’t know how they would split it up and get it to work.
“If there was a boxing league and it could work out and come to fruition, it would be amazing to see how that would work financially for each fighter but I know that there is a lot of UFC fighters that don’t get paid what they feel they are worth.”
These whispers may only be the beginning, but the next expected news from Al-Alshikh is the official announcement of the Anthony Joshua card at Wembley Stadium, with a press conference set to take place on Wednesday June 26th.
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