PACQUIAO, THE WBC, JIVE TURKI, MORE… || FIGHTHYPE.COM

Hello boxing fans and dedicated haters. Here’s another week’s worth of my bulbous sack, bulging with gooey, salty truth, in your face. Enjoy. This week, we have comments/questions regarding Turki tales, the Pacquiao comeback, the WBC, and haters.

Jive Turki, Again?

Hi Paul.

I hope all is well with you and your family.

What do you make of the recent instability in plans for Canelo-Crawford.  Is this a ruse or are there issues with Dana White and potential sites, networks, dates?

Bigger yet, does Turki sense that the money making potential for this event has been diminished by Canelo’s recent showing against William Scull. Maybe the Saudis are pulling back some money from Boxing so they can give more to Donald Trump and his family.

Take care.

– John

Hey John. 

I wouldn’t trust anything coming from Turki or his propaganda outfit, Ring Magazine. So, I don’t know what to make of these recent developments (Turki suddenly changing Canelo-Crawford from Friday, September 12 to Saturday, September 13– to a venue TBA– and from a TKO Group promotion to a Riyadh Season event). 

I don’t think Turki needs a reason to do whatever he wants. He’s thrown enough money around and purchased enough bootlickers to create a bubble of entitlement around himself. There was no reason to lie about the Canelo signing back a few months ago, either, but he did it and it served absolutely no purpose other than to make every fake journalist in his employ look like asshole cucks. And, seeing as how he bragged about it after the fact, I don’t think he’s learned anything since then. 

If this is all true, though, it’s interesting that Turki would be switching Canelo-Crawford from being a TKO Group promotion– the first under the supposed guidance of Dana White– to a Riyadh Season event. It could be for a larger reason, as you mentioned, or simply because White said publicly that he “hated” the idea of putting Canelo-Crawford in Allegiant Stadium and Turki has zero tolerance for dissent. But, again, who knows?

I wouldn’t be surprised one bit, however, if the Saudis did pull back on their boxing spending. Turki’s boxing efforts are not going well financially and his recent missteps in NYC and with Canelo-Scull have been pretty embarrassing. While the Saudis may have a high tolerance for losing money, they won’t keep funding this Turki vanity project if it’s not generating the results they want– bringing tourism to Saudi Arabia and sportswashing their name. By the plethora of empty seats in that “sold out” Riyadh Canelo fight, it’s pretty clear to see that nobody is hopping on flights to jet over to Riyadh for a fight weekend. Millions are better spent currying favor with Trump than with Canelo and Ryan Garcia. 

I really don’t care all that much about any of this. When the fight happens, I’ll watch and report on it. The only guarantee for me is that, with Turki and his gobblers in charge, there’ll be a clusterfuck of bad, fan-unfriendly ideas surrounding it. Step one in that clusterfuck is making consumers unsure of when and where the event will be. I’m no promotions expert, but that doesn’t sound like a great idea.

Pacquiao: Don’t Call It A Comeback…Please, Really, Don’t…

Hey Paul.

Just when you think the WBC can’t get any lower, they top themselves by ranking Manny Pacquiao no. 5 in the welterweight division, just in time to make a fight with their titlist Mario Barrios. Their corruption knows no bounds. 

– A Boxing Guy

Hey Boxing Guy.

If you read Monday’s Notes from the Boxing Underground column, you know my take on the Pacquiao comeback and his fight with Barrios. It’s silly, stupid, and cynical. I expect nothing less than greedy complicity from the WBC in pushing this one through. 

As I also mentioned on Monday, boxing has bigger issues than a Pacquiao comeback. 

I always get a kick out of the fake outrage from media about the alphabet organizations. They are safe targets for outrage because nobody likes them. But most of these media people also lean heavily on the alphabets when it suits their purposes. For example, there are the dopes who justified Saul Alvarez fighting William Scull because Scull held the IBF title and Alvarez wanted to be undisputed. Canelo was already undisputed at 168 and Scull was as much a world champion as I am a jazz dancer. You either be consistent with your outrage or have the decency to walk yourself into spinning helicopter blades.

Personally, my take has always been that the IBF, WBA, WBC, and WBO exist, they have belts, and they are a part of the sport. They need to be acknowledged. It’s stupid and dishonest to ignore them. But legitimacy is another issue entirely, determined entirely on a fighter’s body of work. I think most boxing fans share that same perspective and quickly learn to maneuver around the BS to get at what’s “real.”

Haters and Hated

Hi Paul.

Just curious, but you talk a lot of shit and mention a lot of people by name in your stories. Do you ever hear back from them? If so, what’s that conversation like? 

I’ve been a big fan and a big supporter for longer than I can remember. Keep doing your thing.

– Peter Pedro

Hey Pedro.

The funny thing is that I almost never hear, directly, from any of these people– especially media people. I learned a long, long time ago that boxing media tends to have appallingly little gumption and testicular fortitude. It’s almost liberating for someone like me because I can pretty much toss out anything and they’ll just scatter. Some might…MIGHT…occasionally cuddle up together in some small corner of social media to take swipes at me, if they believe I won’t come around. On the one or two occasions where someone has actually come at me publicly, they’ve regretted it because I hand them their deflated head. 

Boxing media is so generally weak and wimpy that it’s sometimes frustrating. I occasionally fire off emails to figuratively grab them around the shoulders and shake some life into them– “fight back, cocksucker!”

What usually happens, though, is that media just pretends to not know what I write and they continue to play that game of trying to freeze me out. 

Non-media boxing people occasionally write to me when I say something they don’t agree with, but those instances are few and far between.

I think people would be surprised to know, however, just how many respected boxing people– media and non-media– write to me and have been carrying on a longstanding correspondence with me. These are actual pros who know that part of their gig is not only giving criticism, but also taking it.

Ultimately, I just worry about me, though. I keep motoring ahead as well as I can. 

Got a question (or hate mail) for Magno’s Bulging Mail Sack? The best of the best gets included in the weekly mailbag segment right here at FightHype. Send your stuff here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com.