New Boxing Promotion Established
On March 5, Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, announced the creation of a new boxing promotion alongside TKO (the partnership that merges the UFC and WWE). The executive leadership will be anchored by UFC president Dana White and WWE president Nick Khan. Sela, who is also a part of the deal, is a Saudi Arabian entertainment partnership that has been involved with Riyadh Season and Alalshikh’s cards.
While a name for the new promotion has not been made public yet, the promotion did announce a plan to stage its first boxing event in 2026 and include a, according to ESPN, “highly structured system to develop new talent from around the world, including athlete combines and academies.”
Boxers within this promotion will have exclusive access to the UFC’s highly advanced Performance Institute, with locations in Las Vegas, Mexico City, and Shanghai. TKO’s production and media team will handle the in-arena experience and worldwide showings.
This will mark Saudi Arabia’s biggest project yet regarding the boxing world. The country has been heavily involved in Mixed Martial Arts since October of 2023, hosting star-studded fights such as Tyson Fury vs. Francis Ngannou, two Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk bouts, and Dmitry Bivol vs. Artur Beterbiev.
White also has stated that he intends to run this promotion the way the UFC id formatted. That means the plan is to have concrete weight classes with a ranking-based system, with only one championship belt per weight class. This goes against the current boxing format, which has four different belts per weight class.
This is a huge win and a big step forward in a sport that many people believe is fading away. If all works out the way it intends to, we could potentially see the long-awaited revival of boxing, and the start of a new era within Martial Arts.
