When the front man for a journalist-killing monarchy bought Ring Magazine back in November, you just knew that we weren’t in for any Woodward and Bernstein-level journalism. But who could’ve imagined it would be this bad, this OPENLY and PROUDLY and DEFIANTLY “You’re gonna take this shit sandwich and like it” bad?
Well, to be less than modest, I kinda knew.
“The Bible of Boxing” has spent its first three months under Saudi figurehead Turki Alalshikh control equally divided between system malfunction downtime and issuing poorly-crafted content, chock-full of typos, grammatical errors, and clunky wording.
Last week, however, we got a glimpse at one of the real reasons Turki purchased the failing magazine/website tandem– to serve as a firmly-rooted propaganda outfit for the Saudi boxing publicity machine.
On Thursday, after days of Canelo vs. Crawford buzz, the Ring Magazine website posted a typo-hobbled news blurb titled “Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford is Now Off!”
The following day, The Ring posted an article, “Turki Alalshikh Suspending Efforts To Finalize Multi-Fight Deal For Canelo,” giving further details on the supposed cancellation and pointing the finger at Canelo’s decision to fight Jake Paul as the “potential cause for the fallout.”
Then came a story about Canelo and Jake Paul finalizing a deal to face one another, May 3 at T-Mobile Arena.
Minutes later, the site posted that Alvarez had signed a 4-fight deal with Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Season and that the Crawford fight was back on, while the Jake Paul fight was off.
The sudden swerve was “a stunning twist of events,” according to The Ring. What it really was, though, was the last stop on a river ride of steaming bullshit.
As things would turn out, Turki Alalshikh was lying about everything and forcing Ring Magazine to post those lies.
“I will be honest with you,” Turki told Mike Coppinger in an ESPN video interview the following day, bragging about his intentional campaign of misinformation, “I started, in the last 48 hours, giving wrong information to everyone…”
And, as this lie campaign first started to unfold, Ring Magazine staffer Keith Idec’s embarrassing “For the love of God…start trusting professionals who NEVER get the story wrong” Tweet earlier that same morning sat heavy and sour on social media like a gas station chili dog in an empty gut.
Even as someone who only took a few journalism classes in college, I’m pretty sure it hurts Ring Magazine’s credibility when their owner brags that they strategically post false information. And, by the tone and the tenor of his comments, Turki actually fancies himself quite clever for having soiled his media acquisition.
It’s almost as if Turki and the Saudis don’t really value– or even understand– the concept of a free press. Go fucking figure.
Turki also served up bullshit sandwiches to ESPN’s Coppinger during those 48 hours, ultimately forcing his Ring staff to report on Coppinger’s reporting of those fake news stories, creating an endless loop of lies feeding back into lies. And he did it for no apparent reason other than to passive-aggressively manipulate “the sheep,” as he subsequently referred to fans and/or critics on Twitter.
“Copp” would sell his mother’s kidneys for a scoop, to justify the high-profile ESPN gig which he totally doesn’t deserve. So, it’s not exactly difficult to juke him out of his loafers.
The big problem with Turki’s banquet of misinformation– other than it potentially being illegal in this case– lies in the way he used his own media outfit like, well, if I can be characteristically vulgar, a cum rag.
I find it hard to believe that any self-respecting writer or journalist working for Ring Magazine feels all that good about himself/herself right now. I know, personally, I would feel like a great big jackass if my boss made me an accessory to bullshit when, ostensibly, my entire reason for existing is to report the truth. It wasn’t bad enough that Turki made them all publicists in service to The Ring’s new status as de facto promoter, he now has them playing patsies to his “I’m clever” whims.
Yeah, boxing business people floating misinformation to the press is common in boxing. But the press supposedly exists to push back on the lies. Media owned by those they cover CAN’T push back. And they especially can’t push back against owners who have zero tolerance for free-press insolence (plus, of course, a history of killing or imprisoning uppity journalists).
When it comes to explaining why this Saudi boxing takeover will be a bad thing, I’ve made my case several times before. Most fans have fallen for the grooming and the short-term gains at the expense of long-term viability. People will just have to learn the hard way– and I hope to be here to say “I told you so.”
This Saudi Arabian takeover is an inherently losing proposition. The idea of taking boxing to a place where there is no history of it, no real taste for it, and no in-region marketing to make it a success is pure folly, especially when you consider that the Saudis’ big boxing strategy centers around selling the sport back to markets from which it’s been pilfered.
For instance, we can see the desperation in this Canelo deal, for money I was told “dwarfed” Canelo’s 11-fight, $365 million deal with DAZN. Signing an established pay-per-view star was imperative because, so far, the Saudi boxing effort has been a massive financial failure. They need star power and they need to make inroads into the American market. Canelo, despite waning relevance and diminishing pay-per-view buy rates, was a necessity.
But they will hemorrhage money with this Canelo arrangement. The upcoming May 3 Alvarez-William Scull farce in Riyadh, which will be the first fight in Canelo’s Saudi deal, will probably be the biggest money-loser in boxing history. It will put to a test the tired narrative about the Saudis not really caring about making money.
And while the Saudis burn through their loot, Turki will continue to burn off whatever credibility Ring Magazine still has, in service to the monarchy.
And, while, yeah, it’s “just” boxing, a strong, independent media is an important thing to have, everywhere. It’s especially important in this seemingly pivotal moment in our culture.
Power and privilege are rapidly consolidating their power and privilege, at the expense of the rest of the 99.9%. The only thing that impedes that power grab is a free press, whose entire existence is based on the idea that informing the public mobilizes that public against such power grabs.
That’s why powerful people tend to really, really dislike the media– except in boxing, where the powerful people OWN the media.
The funny thing about this whole boxing/Turki/Saudi stuff is that if we HAD a powerful independent media to hold feet to fire, to demand that the promoters and power brokers do their jobs, there would’ve been no itch to sell the sport off to a murderous monarchy in the first place. We could’ve had everything we wanted, right here and right now.
But, as I’ve long asserted, boxing dim-wittery is pumped from an infinite well of stupid.
The best we can hope for right now is an entertaining burn, watching the doomed rats scurry about for crumbs in the growing flames, before the possibility of a proper rebuild.
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com
