Why the hell should you, the boxing fan, care about the current efforts to amend the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act?
You just want fights. You want to sit down with a beer and watch good scraps with good food and get drunk on some brutal escapism. That’s all. Let the politicians be political and the business people make their business moves. You just want the fights you want.
Now these guys from Saudi Arabia and TKO Group (parent company of the UFC and WWE) have come along telling you that they’re going to give you everything you’ve been yearning for as a boxing fan. Things will be just like the old days. But to make that happen, they first need the government to amend the smithereens out of that pesky Ali Act.
Sounds a little like a crooked politician selling voters on how the country is broken and only they have the solution to fix it– but, first, they need all the power.
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TKO Group’s rewritten Ali Act—the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act, headed to the House of Representatives for a vote tomorrow, March 24—is almost impressive in its brazen gall. It’s essentially a revision of the original Ali Act, but with provisions added that completely contradict the law’s core purpose. Specifically, it undermines the safeguards meant to protect fighters from coercive contracts and to force financial transparency.
It creates a “here are the laws, except for my company” workaround that, not surprisingly, works to the great– and currently singular– benefit of TKO Group and its boxing branch, Zuffa Boxing. It’s a little like setting a 55 mph speed limit, but with an “except my car when I’m late for work” provision built in.
In TKO/Zuffa’s particular case, the changes to the original Ali Act would allow them to create belts, make rankings, serve as promoters, operate as managers, and generally have all power and revenue flow entirely through them, as they bathe in the baby blood of coercive contracts and focused dickery. And while their mouthpieces tout this “fighters can choose to be with us or not” line, the combat sports conglomerate– backed by Saudi Arabian money and copious amounts of behind-the-scenes skulduggery– is simultaneously working to make sure there is no competition.
Type your email… Subscribe MMA Draw and Boxing Insider have been doing a great job of covering the questions and issues surrounding the proposed act. Give them a look if you’re inspired to look at the specifics in detail. Veteran scribe Thomas Hauser also did a tremendous piece in The Guardian detailing Zuffa Boxing’s anti-labor contractual features, which go hand-in-hand with a revised Ali Act.
But you just want the fucking fights, right?
Sorry…it’s not that simple.
The passage of the rewritten Ali Act, will give TKO Group a huge advantage in getting that UFC-style boxing monopoly they appear to be lusting after. When they get that stranglehold on the industry, they’ll also be applying the only mindset they know in handling combat sports.
Contrary to paid-for media propaganda, that’s not good for the sport.
If TKO’s apex corporate predator mindset worked for the consumer, there wouldn’t currently be a cascade of complaints from fans of both the UFC and WWE bemoaning the declining quality of the product and the increasingly high cost of live events.
“Lackluster” and “uninspired” seem to be the most common words that pop up in searches of fan takes regarding the current UFC and WWE product. There’s also the feeling that the regular fan is being priced out of the in-person experience in favor of the wealthier ticket buyer.
The reason behind the poor-quality shows and the rising prices is the same.
With TKO Group shows moving to subscription streaming services (the UFC to Paramount+ and WWE to Netflix), there’s now a fixed budget for both. There’s no longer the possibility of a big pay-per-view hit financially (and creatively) fueling the next several shows.
There’s also no real incentive to put on such a big show anymore. As a matter of fact, the fixed budget now means that there’s actually more of an incentive to hold back their biggest and best and spread out the “good” stuff over a longer period of time.
Type your email… Subscribe That, by the way, is the real reason behind TKO looking to seize UFC-style control over boxing by rewriting legislation on behalf of Zuffa Boxing. If the budget is a fixed amount, the only way to squeeze more profit from the business is to lower costs (fighter pay). The UFC and WWE pay their talent around 15% of event revenue while traditional boxing promotions pay between 50% and 80% of revenue to the fighters. That boxing model is not one that works in the TKO business structure.
When the targeted new world order’s purses go down and control gets ratcheted up, where’s the incentive for new fighters to get into the sport? Boxing is not like the UFC or WWE where there’s almost a cultural cachet attached to being a bad-ass MMA fighter or a WWE superstar. In boxing, even the most passionate fighters are keenly focused, first and foremost, on making a substantial living from their efforts.
Will young fighters see boxing as an attractive career option when not long ago the earning upside was so much greater? Coming down from dreams of Floyd Mayweather riches to realities of capped high-end purses will be a definite buzzkill.
The Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act is the perfect pro-corporate combat sports legislation. It squeezes out smaller, less organized opposition while offering the corporate giant protection to do whatever the hell they want. And, maybe most importantly, it provides no clear path to actually enforcing anything in the act, thereby allowing the suits a back door to come back and work around anything in there that may inadvertently be causing them a pain.
Okay, but back to actual boxing, right? You just want good fights!
Aside from the money/pay-related issues that will come up, there’s the reality that imperialists (both in business and in history) tend to be really great at plundering, but really awful at providing for the future of what they plunder.
The passing of the amended Ali Act would force certain promotion-killing operational costs (specifically elevated drug testing) onto small-scale independent promoters, pushing those who are the best at developing talent and getting them to the top levels out of the sport entirely.
A big part of what’s plaguing the current TKO-managed product centers around the companies not doing a very good job of developing new talent and getting them over with fans. This is where boxing would be headed.
Ultimately, TKO Group’s goal is to make money and reward shareholders, not to create combat classics or elite fighters. And, just from the short time they’ve been running the merged UFC and WWE conglomerate under the TKO banner, they seem more inclined to hustle corporate deals than engage in the slow build of financial success through investment in compelling product.
These are not boxing people looking to make good boxing and grow rich off those efforts. These are people who saw a vulnerable target and are looking to exploit it. And with the Saudis fully funding the effort, this is an all-profit venture. It’s the ideal win-win– for them.
You, the fan, are not so much a target as an obstacle. How little can they give you and how much can they charge you for it? Having everything hosted on cheaper streaming services only increases their need and desire to cut corners on overall quality.
Boxing is a sport comprised of individuals who have to push their own way to prominence. It’s an entirely different culture of athlete than that of the UFC. Pushing them into a black and white corral as interchangeable, replaceable parts playing second fiddle to a brand name will kill the spirit and energy of the sport.
It’ll also totally fuck with the growth of a sport whose growth has already been stunted.
And all this will happen if the “revival” act passes, because this thing is nothing but a legislated cheat to facilitate a TKO takeover– funded by the Saudis and intended for Zuffa Boxing– for the sole purpose of completely owning what used to be governed by the open market.
Even if you have no moral feel for fighters being exploited and unfair business practices, opposing this act is just basic consumer sense. Bad business makes for bad product.
