Nothing is off limits in the new boxing promotion and league with White saying all the top world champions will be able to fight there.
Turki Alalshikh has already mentioned he is looking to crush everything quickly with White in terms of becoming number one with their new venture.
Speaking to the Pat Mcafee Show both men opened up on the venture:
“[Interviewer]:
Ladies and gentlemen, Turki Alalshikh is here. Congratulations on the announcement of the boxing promotion with the fine folks at TKO. I assume there were many people who wanted to do boxing business with you. Why did you end up choosing the TKO group—UFC, WWE, Dana White, Nick Khan, Ari Emanuel, and Mark Shapiro? What made that the relationship you chose for your boxing entity out of all the options?
[Turki Alalshikh]:
Yeah, first of all, they are the top in this field. Second, we’ve had a great, long-standing relationship with TKO for a long time, with many successful projects similar to WWE and other ventures. They’re the perfect fit. We share the same vision, and we believe we can reach our goals together.
[Interviewer]:
Okay, Turki, I obviously feel the same way. I work for WWE, and we have massive respect for the UFC and everything Dana White has accomplished, as well as Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro. I agree with everything you’re saying. Can you tell me a little more about your vision of using sports as a bridge between Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world? Why do you think this is the right time for it to happen?
[Turki Alalshikh]:
First of all, this is a private business between us and TKO. In our country, more than 70% of our citizens are young people. We have a big vision from our leader—God bless him—the Crown Prince, with Vision 2030. One section of this vision is sports. We have a lot of big things coming up: the World Cup in 2026, the World Cup in 2034, the Expo, and many other major projects. Sports are very important to us. We’ve had WWE in Saudi Arabia for about 10 years now. I have my brother Nick Khan here in the room with me—come on, baby!
[Interviewer]:
Nick, congrats! Nick, congrats! Super genius, by the way—a super genius. Nick Khan is absolutely the right guy to make these decisions. You look thin, too, Nick. You look good in all the photos!
[Nick Khan]:
Yeah, I haven’t eaten in six weeks. Smart move—it helps!
[Interviewer]:
Smart, smart! Good to see you. Congrats on that. Turki, you’ve talked about your relationship with WWE. I’ve had the chance to chat with WWE superstars and staff who’ve gone over there, from the first show to the most recent one. It feels like there’s been a noticeable shift—both in the warm welcome and the happiness surrounding WWE coming to town, and in the country as a whole. Do you feel that? Is that real?
[Turki Alalshikh]:
Yeah, of course. WWE and many big American franchises have a lot of fans in our country. There are a lot of studies on this. Me, myself—I’ve come to the U.S. for a long time. New York saved me; the hospitals in New York saved me more than once. WWE has a great relationship with us. I want to take this chance to say hi to my father, Vince McMahon. He’s the man I began this journey with, and after that, I continued with my brother Nick Khan. It’s a great relationship. Now, we’re thinking about this boxing league, sharing the same vision with Dana White. We’ll succeed and reach a very far place, inshallah, for the fans.
[Interviewer]:
Joining us now—speaking of the man you just referred to—ladies and gentlemen, Dana White, President of UFC. Hello, Dana! Congratulations, congratulations! Honestly, we know you started in boxing, you love boxing, and you’ve been disappointed with the state of boxing over the last few years, from what we’ve heard in our chats with you. What’s the conversation been like about what you’re going to do? I saw you on First Take talking about how the best will fight the best, and there won’t be all these titles. How do you go about doing that? Are you finding young fighters? Are you getting established fighters? What’s the plan to build your roster?
[Dana White]:
Yeah, there’s a lot of young talent out there—up-and-coming talent that people don’t know about yet. We’re going to stack cards from the first fight of the night to the main event, packed with great fights. You’ll see a lot of undefeated guys fighting each other to work their way up to win the world title. My big issue with boxing has always been that nobody has ever invested back into the sport. All these promoters just take, take, take, and never reinvest. In the history of the sport, no one has invested more money into boxing in such a short time than Turki has. He’s very passionate about it. Literally, none of this could’ve been done without a guy like him stepping in.
[Interviewer]:
Okay, let’s talk about that. We’ve watched the fights—Tyson Fury’s had a few, and there have been other marquee fights in Saudi Arabia. Big stages, big arenas, sellouts—we’re all watching from afar. How many fights a year are you expecting to put on? Will they all be in Saudi Arabia? How will the logistics work with this promotion?
[Dana White]:
Now that we’ve got the deal done, we start building the infrastructure. We’ve got to build a team, then go out and get a rights deal. Once we have a rights deal, we can structure it to whatever the network needs—we can put on as many fights as they want. When we started the UFC, we had about 12 contracts, and everybody fought each other. You get the best available talent in the world, they work their way up. We’re going to have Olympians, guys who are already undefeated with established records, plus Turki has commitments for some big fights with guys out there right now. There are a lot of fun, exciting fights to make. You know how I run shows—the live events will all change. It’ll be much better than anything you’ve seen before. You won’t have one fight, then a podcast, then another fight 45 minutes later, seeing four fights in six hours. All that’s going to change when we start running the show. The in-arena experience will be special, especially with WWE and UFC being part of the production. It’s going to be a must-attend event in Saudi Arabia.
[Interviewer]:
So now you’ve got golf, boxing matches, soccer, fighting—why was boxing the next one you wanted to focus on? Why was this the next play for you and Saudi Arabia?
[Turki Alalshikh]:
Just a love of the sport, yes, of course. With the support of my boss, the Crown Prince—God bless him—he likes to support anything for the young generation. We discovered a chance in boxing. I like boxing. He gave me the resources and supported me a lot. With the right people, I think we’ll succeed. Dana, behind him, has huge experience. He has the TKO machine, and he’s a bulldozer—he’ll clear the way. We’re behind him. I gave him the flag—and the headache—at the same time yesterday. I said, “Come on, clear the field!” The Bulldozer Dana White—what a nickname!
[Interviewer]:
I can’t wait for that! Speaking of Dana making these fights and finding these fighters, Tone has a question for you.
[Tone]:
Yeah, Dana, do you foresee any of your UFC guys wanting to get in the boxing ring now with this relationship? In the future, will you have events with an octagon next to a boxing ring so we could see it all come together?
[Dana White]:
Oh, no, no, never. I’m sure there are guys who want to box, but I don’t want to see any of that. We’ll keep the boxers in boxing and the MMA guys in MMA. We’ll never do that. Listen, when you go to a boxing match Turki has put on, he’s made some of the best fights that couldn’t be made in the last 30 years in the short time he’s been in the sport. When you ask him why he got into boxing, this guy is incredibly passionate about it—much like when me and the Fertitta brothers got involved in the UFC. This is exactly what boxing needed: a guy like this to come in, bring it all together, and make the big fights happen. Like he said at the beginning of this call, we’re aligned on how we feel this needs to be built from the ground up. We’re going to restructure the entire sport of boxing.
[Interviewer]:
Yeah, it’ll be great for the sport of boxing to be all the way back. I know you’ve shared your feelings about influencer and celebrity boxing matches—like Jake Paul, Logan Paul, Floyd Mayweather fighting different people—which brought a lot of attention to the sport. Now, if you’re able to showcase the greats of the sport, it feels like a good time to hook them, don’t you think, Dana? To get the sport all the way back?
[Dana White]:
Those fights are always going to exist—they’ll always happen whenever a couple of famous guys want to fight each other, even if they’re not boxers. That’ll always be there. What we care about is finding the young, up-and-coming talent, building these fights to find out who the best is in each weight class. There won’t be six different champions in each weight class—there’ll be one. You’ll know who the best heavyweight is, who the best light heavyweight is, and so on. If you start asking fans of the sport, “Who’s the champion at this weight?” they’ll actually know.
[Interviewer]:
Okay, boxing is next. Go ahead, Turki.
[Turki Alalshikh]:
Excuse me, but we also care about the young generation. When I came into boxing, I did a lot of studies. The average age of fans is now 40-plus. The reason? No one wants to take risks on big fights. As Dana said—long events, different platforms to watch, no big fights. The young generation doesn’t care. Now, we’re focusing a lot on that. At the same time, with UFC, we want video games, animation, movies, merchandise—a lot of things will happen. With our relationship with TKO, they have the experience. This man [Dana] built a franchise from scratch. We will succeed. I want to tell you a secret, if he allows me—ask him which fight he’ll have for the first event in September!
[Interviewer]:
Hey, Dana, I have a question for you. Birdie just dropped in my ear that the first event is happening in September. Do you know anything about that?
[Dana White]:
These are things we want to pump the brakes on and announce properly. My friend Turki gets too excited to go out and talk about it! We’re getting together with him tomorrow to shoot some content. When it’s time to announce, we have a massive fight—literally, the kind of fight I’m talking about. A massive fight that only this guy could make happen. This man right here is the only one who could pull it off. Together, we’ll announce it when we’re ready. He’s literally brought boxing back. Today is day one—we’re making our announcement, and we’re going to start building this sport back up from ground zero.
[Interviewer]:
That’s awesome, man! September 4th, the world’s going to change! Let’s go—maybe September 5th, maybe September 6th—who knows what day?
[Dana White]:
Maybe September 20th, maybe September 12th—
[Interviewer]:
Okay, maybe it sounds like September 12th! The sport of boxing will change forever. I’m excited to watch what you guys do with boxing, but I think your investment in sports is a cool thing from our perspective. When it started getting loud, it became a political conversation, a lot of negative conversation. But investing in sports and athletes—it’s easy to see why the world is more similar than divided. We all love people competing, we all love sports, athletes, and people earning what they’ve worked for. So, we’d like to know what’s next after boxing. Go ahead, Con.
[Con]:
Turki, Pat mentioned all those other sports. Golf, more than anything, benefited greatly from LIV. Are there any other projects or sports you’re interested in getting into? There were reports about basketball last month—are there any plans like that on the docket?
[Turki Alalshikh]:
There are a lot of projects. The ones responsible for that are Prince Abdulaziz, the Minister of Sport, and Mr. Yasir Al-Rumayyan. There are a lot of big surprises and opportunities—they’ll announce them at the perfect time. I’m also discussing some very big things with Dana for UFC in our country. There’s also Power Slap—I like Power Slap. They had a huge event in our country last month. Ask Dana about the numbers—the arena was almost 8,000 and sold out in minutes. The people in my country asked to have it again and again.
[Interviewer]:
Turki, can we talk about your country? It seems like your people are very excited for these events. Why do you think there’s a narrative that this wouldn’t work between Saudi Arabia and the United States?
[Turki Alalshikh]:
Can you repeat the question, please?
[Interviewer]:
Why do you think people thought sports bridging these two countries wouldn’t work?
[Turki Alalshikh]:
Our relationship with the U.S. is more than 90 years old now. A lot of our citizens study here, go to hospitals here, vacation here. Many Americans have big jobs in our country. We have a lot of things together. Every project we do together succeeds. With our brave leaders and the leaders of America, we’ve had success, and we think we’ll have more. I don’t want to miss the small things—I want to invite you all on May 2nd to Times Square. Let’s come and see the fight in Times Square for the first time!
[Interviewer]:
I can’t wait for that! I heard you guys are renting out Times Square, putting on three fights, I believe. May 2nd is my birthday—quite a celebration! A nice little birthday party out there in Times Square. I can’t wait to watch this all continue to get started. We’ve learned through this conversation—potentially, maybe September 12th—a boxing promotion that changes the sport forever. Is there a Canelo conversation around September?
[Dana White]:
When you talk about what this guy has done, everybody’s name is in the mix—every big boxer on the planet. He walked Nick and me through some of his plans. He’s got stuff he’s already committed to, separate from what we’re building together. When you see it—first of all, the idea of renting out Times Square is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life. Hilarious! He has this whole AI model of how it’s built out—it’s incredible. It’s one of the greatest promotions in the history of the world. The other things he has planned for the next couple of years are unbelievable, fascinating, and fun—something people will definitely want to see.
[Interviewer]:
Awesome news! September 12th, I can’t wait to watch. Turki, Dana, Nick—congrats to you lads! Thank you for your time. You said, “Crown Prince, God bless him”—that was awesome to hear. Is he involved in all these conversations? How does that work?
[Turki Alalshikh]:
I can’t do anything without his blessing. He’s a man of detail—he takes care of everything and supports everything. With his blessing and support, we’ll go far. There are small things, too—I mentioned Times Square on May 2nd, and there are small cards at the end of June in Alcatraz jail in San Francisco. Maybe me and Dana will keep some promoters there!
[Interviewer]:
Okay, alright! The Diaz brothers have swum from Alcatraz to San Francisco—end of June, can’t wait! But think about this, Pat: in all sports throughout history, this has to be the only one that’s generated trillions of dollars in revenue, and at the end of the day, there’s nothing there. The sport is broken and fragmented—you can’t make the fights everybody wants to see. For the first time ever, it’s being invested in, pulled into one group, and it’ll actually be a functioning business in the next five years. Never been done before—got the right people behind it. Can’t wait to watch it unfold! What’s the name of the promotion? Do you have a name yet?
[Dana White]:
We’re still working on that. It’s TKO right now—we’re not sure if Turki loves that yet or not, but we’re working on it.
[Turki Alalshikh]:
Anything you do, I love it. It’s your call—you’re the boss now!
[Interviewer]:
That’s a good team right there! Shoutout to the Crown Prince—God bless him. We can’t wait to watch what you guys do. Turki, Dana, Nick—TKO boxing, congratulations!”
That is a lot of insight and analysis right there.
So many things to digest.
It is so big for the sport of boxing, the above transcends boxing in many ways and will open up boxing to many new countries and markets in the time ahead.
The above is only the early information available too.
You are looking at history and greatness in the making this year for boxing and worldwide professional sport too — if you read between the lines on some of the above.
