Turki Alalshikh has confirmed when he hopes to host the rematch between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk.
The chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority has become the most influential figure in the sport of boxing in recent years. His vast financial reserves have seen him take hold of the sport and driven it forwards like few others have been able to over the years.
In the past, a reliance on the Pay Per View model as well as a lack of one over-arching governing body and the sports diminishing status at the Olympic Games have all seen it decline in popularity.
Alalshikh has been speaking to ESPN and has said the sport is “broken” as a result and that he plans to fix it. He has already gone a long way to doing that by putting on some of the biggest fights and events of recent times, and the big announcements keep on coming.
“”[Boxing] is broken, but I think we don’t need to get everything back together. We need to improve it with something else, we have a strategic vision where we have identified untapped opportunities and are committed to market improvement.”
The revolution started with Anthony Joshua versus Ruiz in their heavyweight title rematch in December 2019 and has since held marquee events such as Joshua’s rematch with Usyk in August 2022.
After that came Tyson Fury’s match up with Francis Ngannou and then the huge Day of Reckoning card in December which saw Joshua take on Ngannou as well as the likes of Jospeh Parker versus Deontay Wilder and Daniel Dubois versus Jarrell Miller.
On May 18, Alalshikh serves up the biggest contest so far when Fury and Usyk battle it out for the historic undisputed title, and he has now revealed he would like the rematch to take place on October 12 or 13 and that it will be going ahead regardless of what happens in the first fight and who wins.
Oriignally he had planned to match the winner of Artur Beterbiev and Dimitri Bivol against David Benavidez, who has his own fight with Oleksandr Gvozdyk on June 15, on that date to kick off the start of Riyadh Season, but an injury to Beterbiev means that undisputed light heavyweight showdown has been moved to later in the year.
Alalshikh revealed that he has learnt lots in recent times and will be using al that information to keeping pushing the sport on in future.
“We carefully planned our activities for the last six months. We are spending the money to [commercialize] our season and at the same time to test the market and know all the secrets about the market.
“And now we have a lot of information and we have our own studies and we think from what we tested in the last six months, there is big opportunity in boxing. But you must improve the market. You must fix all the problems.”
He also confirmed that the final card of the year will take place in December and will see five American fighters against five U.K. fighters in a format that is similar to the Matchroom versus Queensberry 5 on 5.
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