Notebook: Knockout bonus available for winner of Canelo-Crawford
Major change to Usyk's team month before Dubois rematch; Inoue's December foe in works; Paro back in action; Quick hits; Show and tell
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Over the past 20 months Saudi Arabia’s Turki Alalshikh has spent untold hundreds of millions of dollars to put on significant fight cards and one thing the avowed boxing super fan wants to see is action.
One can only imagine what he must have been thinking when he spent lavishly on recent fights only to see less action than had he watched a wall of paint dry.
In May alone, he sat through the horrendous action-free Canelo Alvarez-William Scull undisputed super middleweight title fight in which Scull fled for 12 rounds, never engaged, and lost a unanimous decision in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as Alvarez, who didn’t do much either, re-unified the division to become the undisputed champion for the second time.
The previous night Alalshikh was ringside in New York’s Times Square to see another pair of stink bombs in the welterweight division as Ryan Garcia sleepwalked through an upset decision loss to Rolando Romero, who didn’t do a whole either, in the main the event and in the co-feature Devin Haney routed the faded Jose Ramirez as both did virtually nothing.
Alvarez and Scull combined to throw 445 punches, setting the all-time CompuBox record for fewest punches thrown in a 12-round fight among the thousands it has tracked in its 40 years in business. Garcia-Romero and Haney-Ramirez also ranked among the top six for lowest combined punch outputs in a 12-round fight tracked by CompuBox.
Now, as Alalshikh and promotional partner Dana White, the UFC CEO and head of the newly founded Zuffa Boxing, have begun to promote the Alvarez-Terence Crawford showdown on Sept. 13 (Netflix) at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, they have made it clear the want to see a fan friendly fight.
