'Muhammad Ali lost five times'… Boxing's most powerful man sends defiant message as he looks to copy UFC model

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Turki Alalshikh is widely regarded as the savior of boxing for the work he has done in the sport over the past few years and now he wants to take it a step further.

In 2023, Turki Alalshikh began putting a lot of money into the sport of boxing and began to make fights that fans had been crying out for, for several years.

A big problem in boxing historically has been getting top names to agree to fight each other with bouts usually being blocked by different promoters.

Turki Alalshikh sends a message to boxers as he looks to adopt the UFC’s model

Whilst boxing was suffering with these ongoing issues, MMA was growing as a sport and the UFC being the promotional powerhouse that it is was benefitting from the lul in boxing.

One way that the UFC has always been able to stand out from boxing, is by consistently putting on fights between the best fighters in the world, giving fans the matchups that they ask for.

And that is something that the Chairman of the General Entertainment Authority in Saudi Arabia is hoping to do with boxing, looking to adopt more of the UFC’s business models.

Turki Alalshikh has begun working closely with the UFC and this past June, the promotion hosted their first-ever event in Saudi Arabia. Then in September, Riyadh Season sponsored the historic UFC 306 event from the Sphere in Las Vegas.

The promotion then announced at the end of 2024 that they will make their return to Saudi for another Fight Night this coming February.

UFC boss, Dana White is reportedly in advanced talks with Turki to start a new boxing league in Saudi, which will run like the UFC’s model.

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With that, Alalshikh has sent a defiant message to the boxing world that the fighters need to adopt a new mentality regarding the sport.

“We must now have it be normal to lose some fights in boxing. All the fighters want similar to the career of Floyd Mayweather – zero losses. This can happen one time every 50/60/70 years. We need like the UFC model now, where the champions are losing and winning.

“Muhammad Ali lost five times and he’s still the legend,” Alalshikh said in an interview with boxing legend, Carl Froch.

Turki Alalshikh names some of the big fights he wants to make in 2025

Historically, boxers have done everything that they can to preserve an undefeated record, with the theory that it makes them more marketable in the long term, and thus, able to earn more money.

Despite that, Turki wants the sport to get away from that model and he wants fighters to be comfortable with picking up losses if they come in big fights.

With that, the most influential figure in boxing has named a few fights that he hopes to make heading into a huge 2025 for the sport.

“Yeah, I want to see (Chris) Eubank (Jr) vs (Conor) Benn, I want to see also of course Tyson (Fury) and (Anthony) Joshua, (Moses) Itauma, I think he deserves to have a chance to be the youngest world heavyweight champion, still he has one year.

“In the American market, I want to see Canelo (Alvarez) vs (Terence) Crawford, I want to see (Ryan) Garcia vs (Devin) Haney the rematch,” he continued.