Boxing has never seen the influx of wealth it is presently experiencing and, for those benefitting, the grass has never looked so green.
The great Roy Jones Jnr, a trainer and analyst these days, told BoxingScene: “Boxing is in a good place right now.”
He heralded the involvement of Turki Alalshikh, the powerbroker behind many of contemporary boxing’s major moves, and said without Alalshikh, a lot of the fights being made today would not be happening.
“The fact that Turki has come in and made these guys start taking real fights and start developing a real fight scheme for them, and he's paying them big money, so they got to do what he say,” Jones added. “And it’s like normal fights that wouldn’t get made, like, for instance, the [Devin] Haney versus [Brian Norman] fight.
“Now, that fight probably never would have gotten made back 10 years ago because guys was on that avoid-the-tough-fight thing. Now he [Alalshikh]’s paying them so much money, they got to take the fights he offers. So now he’s making them much better for the sport of boxing because if you are an elite fighter, you’re going to fight elite fighters. And that’s what we have been missing.”
Jones was a multi-weight champion and Hall of Famer, and is often described as one of the best to take part in the sport.
The one obvious name missing off his resume is Dariusz Michalczewski, who reigned as WBO light heavyweight champion when Roy held the other belts.
If Alalshikh was around back then, in the 1990s, would Jones have fought the German puncher in Saudi Arabia?
“You damn right I would have,” he said. “Because he [Alashikh] would have paid for it and Darius wouldn’t have had a choice. So of course it would have happened right there in Saudi Arabia.”
