Tim Bradley got on his soapbox this week to lecture Turki Al-Sheikh and tell him he hasn’t done anything to improve boxing other than put in a few “good fights.” Tim believes that once Turki leaves the sport, things will be just as bad as they were before he arrived.
Call of the Commissioner
Bradley says he wants Turki to create an acting person to “oversee” the sport in the same way as the NFL and NBA. These leagues have appointed commissioners to oversee the management and path of teams.
It’s unclear if Turki would want to take on this kind of responsibility as it would be a lot of hard work. He seems more interested in putting on good fights between the fighters he chooses. It would be a full-time job for Turki to become a boxing commissioner if he could do it.
“Why don’t you help us build a union so the fighters can stay strong and get their sponsor or whatever,” Tim Bradley said on social media as he lectured Turki Al-Sheikh. “Why don’t you give us a World Boxing Council, someone to look after the whole (sport)? I know we have the WBC, but you know what I mean.
“Someone to oversee, such as the NFL (i.e. commissioner of sports management, appointed by the teams in the league) and the NBA (commissioner, similar to the NFL, appointed by the teams).
“You can have the headquarters in America, and you can have the headquarters over there (Saudi Arabia), and everyone can work together to bring boxing back together in the right way. When you do things like that, you get my attention. If you do something like that, I have your back.
“I really have your back, Turki, because this is what boxing really needs. When you’re gone, Turki, when you decide to leave, we’ll be back to square one. You’ve had some great fights (e.g. Fury vs. Usyk & Beterbiev vs. Bivol), but boxing hasn’t changed anything. You haven’t changed.
Shaping the future of boxing
“So my point of view on boxing is different than all of you. You all get the fights you want, which is great. It’s fantastic, but that won’t solve all the problems boxing has. We need a governing body that oversees the entire sport,” Bradley said.
Tim Bradley says if Turki REALLY wants to save boxing 🥊, “he needs to create a union for fighters old and new and have boxing under one umbrella that rules over the entire sport, like the NBA and NFL.”
Turk is putting a band-aid on boxing
🎥 @Timbradleyjr #Boxing pic.twitter.com/IRDdpYgurH
— Pound4Pound (@Pound4our4Pound) January 17, 2025
In the past, promoters around the world put out a lot of high-priced, low-quality cards and much of the interest in boxing disappeared. Too many events were placed behind a PPV paywall, preventing fans from seeing fights unless they were willing to pay $70 to see the mostly uneven fights.
The promoters made matters worse by always pitting their fighters against opponents who couldn’t win. This continues today, and we’ve even seen it on some of Turki’s cards, with promoters stacking the undercards in fights with no competitive value.