George Groves thinks it’s just a matter of time before Turki Alalshikh gets bored with the boxing business.
Alalshikh, chairman of the General Entertainment Authority in Saudi Arabia, stormed onto the boxing scene determined to fix the “broken” sport. Since then, he’s purchased The Ring magazine and promoted several events under his Riyadh Season banner, including the upcoming clash between Canelo Alvarez and Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford in September.
With a seemingly endless supply of money, Alalshikh has been investing hundreds of millions in promoting bouts like Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk, Anthony Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois, and Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero.
Alalshikh has even recently announced a partnership with Dana White to launch a brand-new boxing promotion that will attempt to revolutionize the industry using the same model that made the UFC a global juggernaut in the world of mixed martial arts.
But according to Groves, a former British boxing world champion, it’s just a matter of time before Alalshikh gets tired of losing money on his grand boxing endeavour and bows out of the sport altogether.
“Everyone’s desperate to be part of Riyadh Season, desperate to be friends with Turki Alalshikh because he’s got so much money,” Groves said at a Midnite Q&A event. “But at some point, he’s going to get bored of running at a loss, so maybe that’s why Dana White’s on his way in.
“Every now and again, you get a gift in boxing, and you get overpaid. DAZN came in, ‘We’ve got a billion dollars.’ Great, a quarter of that is going to Canelo. Who else are you going to sign? You sign two more fighters, and they’re going to want the same as Canel,o and you’ve got no money left. Before them, it was PBC who came in with a massive investment. MTK was throwing money around. This stuff doesn’t last forever.”
Groves used Tyson Fury’s promotional deal with Top Rank, which includes broadcasting his fights on ESPN in the United States, as an example of how throwing money at fighters with reckless abandon could come back to bite cash-rich promoters like Alalshikh in the future.
“Tyson Fury does a deal with ESPN and he’s allegedly getting £80 million over three years or five fights,” Groves continued. “The first few fights are just the gifts, the puddings, and then you’ve got to fight Wilder — it can be hard.
“It’s like ‘I’m getting the same money to fight this donut and to fight this fella who might take my head off.”
