LAS VEGAS -- When Saúl "Canelo" Álvarez and Terence "Bud" Crawford take the center of the ring on Saturday night, it will mark one of the sport's historic moments.
It is a meeting between two of the finest boxers of their era; two men who, despite their legacies already being cemented, are willing to lay everything on the line in a bid to prove their ultimate supremacy. It is also the opening night for the newest partnership in boxing, a bid to take over the sport by UFC president Dana White and Turki al-Sheikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia's General Entertainment Authority.
Taking a step back from the glitz and glamour of a Las Vegas prizefight streamed globally on Netflix, and Saturday emerges as the latest twist for a sport that, for the last two years, has felt as though it is built upon shifting sands. It is in constant motion, undergoing constant change.
From boxing's intricate political landscape to the economics that drive the sport, including television, almost nothing seems as it was in a period of transition that could perhaps only happen in combat sports.
And the implications have deep meaning for boxers up and down the sport, as well as the organizers jockeying to craft and sell the biggest events to entertainment giants, with Netflix emerging as the most sought-after dance partner in the room.
A former president of Showtime Sports, Stephen Espinoza, uses one word to describe the current state of boxing: Uncertainty. "It's clearly in a period of transition," he said in an interview.
While the entertainment industry has changed significantly in the last decade in terms of how people find and watch content, including sports, Espinoza said that boxing is undergoing a parallel transition that has made other sports seem relatively stable by comparison.
"Most sports continue without massive change in the power players and the business model," Espinoza said. "Boxing is completely different. Everything is up for grabs at this point."
"From a business standpoint, it is fascinating to watch," he added. "As a participant in the sport, whether you're a fighter or a business person, it can be disconcerting and chaotic."
The emergence of al-Sheikh, who also uses the surname Alalshikh, as the dominant figure in the sport has been a catalyst for many of these changes. His wielding of financial might that no one else in boxing can match has quickly allowed him to take a seat at the top table -- a table that for so long has been occupied by an endless stream of competing voices and egos.
Suddenly, the power shifted. Stalwarts of the sport, such as Top Rank CEO Bob Arum, Golden Boy founder Oscar De La Hoya, Matchroom chairman Eddie Hearn and Queensberry founder Frank Warren, no longer controlled the sporting landscape. As a consequence, they began to work together more. Hearn and Warren, who had barely spoken in the years since the former took over the Matchroom helm from his father, Barry, understood that collaboration was necessary to keep up.
The breakdown of these traditional promotional barriers has led to a softening of the hard-line broadcast deals that previously meant Star Boxer A couldn't take on Star Boxer B simply because each fought on different platforms.
All of which has meant some of the biggest fights in the sport are suddenly possible: Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol, Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk and, now, Álvarez vs. Crawford.
"Sometimes I think promoters are too embarrassed to say it, but it's amazing to have someone in the sport that can help you make the fights," said Ben Shalom, the founder of the U.K. promotional company Boxxer, which rose to prominence in 2021 when it signed an exclusive broadcast agreement with Sky Sports.
"When there is someone in between who can't be told where to go and what to do, it helps the sport," he said of al-Sheikh. "Boxing doesn't have one adjudicator. It doesn't have one governing body. It doesn't have a fixture list. So, sometimes you need someone who can be impartial and sit in the middle, and I have to credit him for that."
There have been knock-on effects of the Saudi influence, though. Specifically, of the vast infusions of Saudi money. (Álvarez signed a four-fight deal with al-Sheikh reported to be worth $400 million, including at least $100 million for the fight against Crawford, who said on a podcast that he was being paid at least $10 million.)
"If you were to speak to promoters -- even those who have worked closely with Alalshikh -- they will admit that as a consequence of the money being paid on Saudi-funded events that certain boxers are not as willing to get involved at a domestic level in Britain or certain fights in America," said Matt Christie, the former editor of Boxing News.
"They're holding out for that bumper payday," he said. "It's almost like boxing eating itself again."
One influential boxing figure in the United States, who spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity to protect working relationships, said the Saudi purses have changed how fighters assess their bouts.
Referencing the famous refrain of former middleweight champion Marvin Hagler that "it's tough to get out of bed to do roadwork at 5 a.m. when you've been sleeping in silk pajamas," the boxing figure said fighters who were once striving for silk pajamas are now "more complacent."
"They're more apprehensive. They're not as driven. They're saying, 'Hey, I can stand in line and maybe get a big ticket for a purse one night from the Saudis,'" he said.
That is leading to less frequent competition, which is not helpful for a sport that has long struggled to find a foothold among the behemoths of the NFL and the NBA. The boxing figure said one young fighter who made $600,000 for a bout earlier this year told his promoter afterwards that he didn't want to fight again for seven months. "That psychology is what we're going upstream against," he said.
Related to that is what the boxing figure describes as a change in how boxers are valued commercially. He said that what used to drive a fighter's value -- frequency and awareness -- is not what's driving it now. "The commercial value that we've seen has been thrown away, and it's just the value of what the Saudis think is fair for that athlete. That's the disruption," he said.
"It's almost like an art collector saying, 'Hey, I want to see this on my wall. What's the ask? I'll hit it.' It's just their play. What they want, they get," he said. "And it's hard for people in the business to chase that. I run my business on a P&L (profit and loss statements), they run it on an L. There's a big difference. They forgot about the P."
Asked how he would describe the health of boxing in the United States, Espinoza called it "questionable," largely because of a lack of distinct media partners. When Top Rank's eight-year partnership with ESPN expired in July, it marked just the latest exit of a key media player from boxing. "Eight to 10 years ago, there was Showtime and HBO, ESPN and Fox," Espinoza said. "Fast forward to today, and HBO is out, Showtime is out, Fox is out, ESPN seems to be out. Even some of the streamers that have come in, in the meantime, have already exited or diminished their participation in the sport."
Naoya Inoue, who is one of the top pound-for-pound fighters and 30-0, is defending his super bantamweight title on Sunday in Japan, just hours after Álvarez and Crawford fight. Top Rank announced Thursday that the Inoue fight would stream on its Facebook page in the U.S. and the U.K., a far cry from the Netflix showcase and a downgrade from its previous ESPN distribution.
Espinoza said media companies have largely held back from boxing because of its discord. "If there's one thing that media partners dislike, it's uncertainty. It's not knowing what they're going to get from their content deals," Espinoza said. "And right now it's hard for a media partner to put their money on a particular horse because it's unclear who's going to emerge as the power player."
In the U.K., there is similar uncertainty with Sky Sports not renewing its deal with Boxxer, which ended in June. There is also no sign of a renewed agreement between Sky Sports and Top Rank to broadcast the American promoter's shows in the U.K. and Ireland. Boxxer, meanwhile, announced a new deal with the BBC in August -- a promising step given that it takes boxing back to free-to-air television -- but there have been no details about scheduling or the number of shows.
Elsewhere, TNT Sports' deal with Queensberry expired in April this year, leaving Warren to join Hearn on the DAZN platform and TNT without any regular boxing programming.
With the two biggest promoters in the U.K. now operating behind the DAZN paywall, which does not yet pull in the kind of viewership that Sky Sports or TNT were able to thanks in large part to their Premier League rights, it raises the question of who exactly is watching?
"It's still a big ask for those who were dipping in and out of boxing on Sky or TNT to subscribe to DAZN," says Christie. "We have seen for a long time that increasingly boxing is putting itself behind a paywall; it's not open to everybody."
Though still involving a paywall, the involvement of Netflix is a positive, says Christie, because of the impressive viewership numbers that the platform can bring. Netflix reported that it crossed 300 million subscribers worldwide at the end of last year.
But, Christie adds, it's important to question how significant Netflix's commitment is to the sport. "Are they investing in a product? Or are they just investing in one event?" Christie said.
It has long been one of the sport's biggest issues: While most sports have a start and end to a season, a fixture list or tournaments at set times of the year, boxing has a consistently movable feast. One of the biggest reasons for that is the lack of an overriding commission governing the sport, leaving no structure and gaping holes in regulation and fighter safety.
In what other sport would an athlete who has failed a drug test in one jurisdiction be free to compete in another without that information being required to be shared across commissions? (In June, Francisco Rodríguez Jr. failed a fight-night drug test after handing Galal Yafai his first loss. It later emerged that he had also failed a post-fight drug test after his previous bout in Texas in December 2024, but neither Yafai's promoter nor the British Boxing Board of Control was aware.)
"There is no one looking after boxing," Christie said.
It's in this lawless landscape that Dana White and al-Sheikh see their opportunity, which they have framed as a rescue effort for a sport that is broken.
The promotional company Zuffa Boxing, co-founded by White, includes al-Sheikh as a deep-pocketed partner and TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of the UFC and World Wrestling Entertainment.
White is promising Zuffa will run like a league, including a boxing version of the Contender Series that has been successful in providing a mixed martial arts talent pipeline to the UFC.
Only this time, the pipeline will lead straight to al-Sheikh. Talking to Vegas PBS this week, White explained: "The best will fight the best, undefeated guys will fight undefeated guys, and what you will do is you will care about the first fight of the night, and not just the main event. So I will build stars, put on great fights, and then these guys will graduate and fight with Sheikh Turki."
On an earnings call in August, Mark Shapiro, the chief operating officer of TKO Group Holdings, said TKO is essentially serving as a managing partner for Zuffa and separately handling the megafights, receiving a roughly $10 million fee for each superfight for duties, including negotiating television rights. "That's all margin for us. TKO has no funding obligation," Shapiro said of Zuffa, adding that the superfights were a "no risk" proposition for TKO.
The funding? That's al-Sheikh's domain, with the full backing of Saudi Arabia's global ambitions.
At a showcase news conference at T-Mobile Arena on Thursday, a sizzle reel touted the Álvarez-Crawford bout as an existential moment for the sport. Álvarez thanked al-Sheikh and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by name. White said the opportunity to work with al-Sheikh was too good to pass up. And al-Sheikh himself pushed back at a question about Álvarez earning at least $100 million for the bout by saying it was an underestimate.
Max Kellerman, the longtime boxing commentator who returned to the sport in a deal with The Ring, the boxing magazine bought by al-Sheikh last year, described the boss glibly: "If he's never born, none of us are here right now. This was his idea."
Only time will tell whether all this starts a new era. The renowned boxing journalist and author Tris Dixon points out that perhaps change is good in a dysfunctional sport. "They're trying to tear up or improve something that we've been saying has been broken for years," he said. "Whether or not they're doing it in the right way or that their way is the right way is all going to remain to be seen, though."
One hint of their direction has come in the form of the Muhammad Ali Revival Act, a controversial bill backed by TKO. The bill, introduced to the U.S. Congress in July, proposes alterations to the Ali Act of 2000, which aimed to protect the rights and welfare of professional boxers. Some of the amendments, including the introduction of minimum pay and minimum insurance requirements, are clearly favorable for athletes. But it also seeks to allow the creation of unified boxing organizations as an alternative to the sanctioning bodies that currently oversee boxing. One such organization would likely be Zuffa Boxing.
White dismissed a question about the legislation on Thursday at the public news conference, saying "This isn't about me and my business, it's about these two guys on Saturday."
The Revival Act has left some pondering what the endgame looks like for Zuffa.
"If we compare the two business models, UFC versus boxing, the most stark difference is in the distribution of revenues and the amount of revenues that go to the fighters in particular," said another influential boxing figure in the United States who detailed finances to The Athletic on condition of anonymity to protect relationships.
"They're almost upside-down mirror images of each other, with 20 percent or less going to UFC fighters, and probably in the range of 20 to 30 percent of the revenues in boxing going to the promoters.
"When Zuffa talks about reforming or fixing a broken boxing model, what it really sounds like is a redistribution of revenues away from the fighters and to the promoters," he said.
Espinoza is wary of where the legislation could lead. He points out that boxing has never had a unified promoter, sanctioning body or administrator of ratings and title belts, and that while there are disadvantages, there are advantages and protections, too.
"Perhaps it is a good idea to have one body administering all of that. In general, though, I'm more a fan of not having all of those constraints or all of those different responsibilities be under the control of the promoter," Espinoza said. "While certainly you gain efficiency, you lose the independence, arguably some objectivity. And allow for the possibility of manipulation."
There's also the question of where it leaves the sanctioning bodies, chiefly the World Boxing Council (WBC), World Boxing Association (WBA), World Boxing Organization (WBO), International Boxing Federation (IBF), and International Boxing Organization (IBO).
"There's one scenario where you could argue their days are numbered," says Christie, "and that would be if The Ring was to stand out as the most desirable belt in boxing."
These are organizations with numerous squabbles but also deep roots in the sport. Boxers from all over the world have grown up dreaming of winning the belts that legends of the sport once had wrapped around their waists. "You can't delete that," said Dixon. "But we have also seen it before where people have chosen bigger purses over championships and legacy."
"Until someone came in with the deep pockets that Turki had, they probably weren't under threat, but now someone can afford to say to people, 'No, we don't need those titles, we're gonna use these ones instead,'" Dixon added. "I think they can be made irrelevant over time."
Dixon looks ahead with a mix of optimism and dread. Most want to see better protections and less exploitation of fighters so that they are exposed to the least amount of danger in a sport that cannot escape it.
"Rather than trying to nail superfights and stay on this treadmill of looking for the big payoff every time, I'd much rather people look into the health and safety of fighters," Dixon said, "creating a level playing field and trying to get the house in order first before they start doing all the cool stuff."
Al-Sheikh said Thursday that he wanted the fighters to be safe -- but only in jest as a setup to a more violent ask. "I want to see Saturday blood, smashing faces and broken bones," he said.
When The Athletic asked Álvarez this week how he hopes the sport will look five years from now, with splashy sunglasses on his face and a luxury watch on his left wrist, he simply said: "Like this. Look at this, how big and how beautiful looks boxing like this.
"I want to see boxing many years looking like this."