Staff writer Yury Karutin writes on the recent high-stakes fight between Canelo and Crawford for the undisputed super middleweight championship of the world.
Crawford beat Canelo Alvarez on the 14th of September to win his third undisputed weight division and remain undefeated in his professional career. Terrence “Bud” Crawford has now won three weight divisions, but this fight had far more implications than just titles. This is because, apart from the fighters, the promoters of the event had their time in the spotlight too.
The bout took place in Las Vegas at the 5-year-old Allegiant Stadium and drew a crowd of 70,000 people. This set attendance records for a Las Vegas boxing match as well as for any event in Allegiant Stadium.
Both fighters had a lot of name power coming into the bout. Crawford is an undefeated fighter, while Canelo has only been defeated by titans of the sport such as Gennady Golovkin, Dmitri Bivol and Floyd Mayweather. Canelo Alvarez is a titan of modern boxing, a superstar for multiple decades, who came up from humble beginnings. Terence Crawford‘s rise to the top is also an underdog story, having worked his way up through hard work.
However, the stakes of the fight were not just the titles or legacies on the line for the fighters, as its success was also important for the promoters behind it. The event was produced by the Saudi General Entertainment Authority chairman, Turki Al-Sheikh and UFC president Dana White, who is also under the banner of the TKO group, formed after a merger between the UFC and WWE as a major player in combat sports and entertainment. They promoted it through Zuffa Boxing, a new firm they both have control over.
The Saudi government has invested heavily in sports over the past few years in what groups like Human Rights Watch claim is an example of “sportswashing“. They define this as the use of positive publicity that hosting a major sporting event brings to obscure negative publicity. This is something more associated with the footballing world but many say that hints of this can also be seen in this event. An event of this scale and level of publicity, with the two major stars unifying a division as well as doing it in a new state of the art arena shows how organised and reliable TKO and GEA are, providing them with the opportunity to claim that they can be a major player in the boxing world.
Dana White and TKO are more interested in gaining a stronger foothold in the sport. TKO holdings formed as a result of a merger between WWE and UFC, the two main entities in professional wrestling and mixed martial arts respectively. Dana White is no stranger to entering a new market and monopolising it, something he has done with the world of MMA by taking the UFC from $2m to $4.5b in value through moves such as purchasing his main competitor PRIDE FC in 2007.
Dana White promoted the Mayweather-McGregor bout in 2017, which was a similar “superfight” between two athletes from different sports in their prime. His success with the UFC and later TKO made him a major player in combat sports, but he has only promoted fights based on name value with years apart between them.
Turki Al-Sheikh also made inroads into boxing, with him purchasing “The Ring” magazine, an over 100 year-old magazine known primarily for its rankings of fighters. Many rely on the Ring’s title to understand rankings, given that there are 4 world titles in professional boxing.
Their involvement in the fight is part of TKO and GEA’s most recent move to become more prominent in the world of boxing. Boxing is not only big for publicity, but it also carries a lot more prestige than MMA or pro wrestling due to its longer history and larger audience, something Canelo himself said at a press conference for the bout when he said “boxing is always bigger”, to which Crawford agreed.
With the success of this bout, as well as the increasing influence of TKO and the GEA in boxing, Canelo v Crawford was certainly one of the most important fights in professional boxing history.
Boxing is undoubtedly changing. As it enters yet another transitional phase and more and more eyes fall on streaming services, it seems as though TKO and GEA have seen their chance to gain a dominant position in the market.
