At Large: Anthony Joshua’s latest challenge confirms Saudi Arabia’s heavyweight influence – SportsPro Media

Muhammad Ali has a secret about the Rumble in the Jungle.

“The true significance of why this fight is being fought in Africa,” he says, looking warmly down a filmmaker’s lens in footage from the seminal 1996 documentary When We Were Kings, “is because they came up with US$10 million. US$5 million for George Foreman. US$5 million for me. London, England was trying to get it. Promoters here in America were trying to get it. But none of them could surpass the US$5 million mark.”  

The “they” in this conversation is the government of what in 1974 was Zaire, and more specifically, its ruler President Mobutu Sese Soko. A kleptocratic despot who had seized power of what had been the Belgian Congo through a succession of military coups in the 1960s, Mobutu was eager for the international community to start using the name he had given the country in 1971 – and for casual observers to look away from his more homicidal tendencies. 

He found the aforementioned US$10 million that Don King, then an up and coming boxing promoter with a troublesome past, had guaranteed the fearsome champion Foreman and his magnetic challenger. King hit upon the wheeze of making the fight a celebration of black America and its reconnection with Africa, complementing it with a high-calibre music festival, and Ali’s enthusiastic participation in that exercise – together with his shock victory in a ring epic – helped to consecrate a legend. 

The only strongman who makes the short version of this story is the one Ali beat in the ring. But the whole enterprise started out as one of the more transparent attempts at image laundering in the whole history of sport. 

All of which is a roundabout way of noting an ironic depth to comparisons between the Rumble in the Jungle or the Thriller in Manila and the upcoming world heavyweight title rematch between Andy Ruiz and Anthony Joshua, the starry British favourite he stunned in New York back in June. The two are booked to meet again in the ‘Clash on the Dunes’ on 7th December at a temporary venue in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia – subject to Ruiz’s dissent over the nature of his rematch clause being pacified. 

The bout is the latest example of the kingdom’s use of sport and entertainment, together with marginal reforms of its notoriously repressive governance, to rehabilitate its image and diversify its economy. Those efforts hit a high gear through 2018, with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman omnipresent at events like the Fifa World Cup and at the side of international leaders. 

Fallout from the October murder in Istanbul of the American-based journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi prompted a partial retreat amid intense global scrutiny. Now, though, it seems the project is back on the agenda. 

The Times last week reported talks about a possible Formula One Grand Prix in Saudi Arabia before Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, dropped the news about December’s fight. It is a prospect which has elicited the same queasiness as other international events there, from European Tour golf to WWE and Italian Supercoppa soccer, and drawn the same kind of response from pressure groups. Citing outrages like an ongoing crackdown on domestic political opponents and women’s rights activists, and Saudi conduct in a horrific proxy war in Yemen, Amnesty International has called on Joshua personally to “inform himself of the human rights situation and be prepared to speak out about Saudi Arabia’s abysmal human rights record”. 

That kind of opposition does not look likely to deter event operators with an eye on Saudi Arabia, and it is worth examining the dynamics around that. The ‘Clash on the Dunes’ is a departure for Hearn and for Matchroom Boxing, whose recent reputations have been made through fan-friendly, high-capacity stadium promotions, and whose plans for Joshua had involved an assault on the US in partnership with over-the-top (OTT) streaming service DAZN.

Speaking to the press earlier this week, Hearn conceded that money and infrastructural resource had been a factor in the deal – the Telegraph has reported a US$100 million commitment to the fight by Saudi authorities, with the Athletic suggesting a US$40 million site fee would be paid. Forthrightly, Hearn added that “sometimes the criticism and the curiosity will lead to an event of an extraordinary magnitude”.

Hearn also said that he was not the only promoter who had sought to take a “mega fight” there. “If Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region start investing in sport the whole game will change,” he added. “If people aren’t on board with that, and don’t realise the potential for sport in those regions, we are all idiots. 70 per cent of public there is under 24.”

But Hearn also sought to convey the impression of a decision taken with care, saying his team “had to be very comfortable because we knew there would be criticism”. 

“And we also looked at the bigger picture,” he continued.“If [Joshua] wins this fight it opens up a whole new world for him and for boxing. It could change the sport forever.”

References to a local “vision” for global boxing hint at an emerging strand in the packaging of Saudi-based promotions. For the sports industry, the ongoing regional dispute between a Saudi-led Gulf bloc and the state of Qatar has brought its own complications. Chief among those is that of Saudi-based illegal broadcast service BeoutQ, the piratical high-stakes prank being inflicted on the Qatari-based BeIN Sports. Yet even with no end in sight to that protracted row, rights holders look prepared to risk income from BeIN on a long-term relationship with Qatar’s neighbour.  

Silos of events are being formed: Ruiz and Joshua follow Amir Khan and the finals of the World Boxing Super Series; a Formula One race would follow Formula E, joining an automotive bloc that handily underscores the recent softening of a ban on women drivers. The emphasis is on a collaboration towards progress, which is either a meaningful assurance or a PR sweetener to sportwash down any unpleasant taste.

There has been a relative absence, meanwhile, of the kind of whataboutery that sometimes bleeds into communications strategies for other compromised hosts: references to the records of other nations, or the slide of some settled democracies towards authoritarianism, or the geopolitical misadventures of established free powers. The message is more collaborative. 

There are reasons for that. It was notable in the wake of the Khashoggi murder that Endeavor returned a recent US$400 million Saudi investment – notable because almost no one else did. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund has bought up pieces of companies that are part of the everyday lives of billions of people: Twitter, Uber, Lyft, WeWork, Snap and Tesla among them. Through its own activities and its backing of the SoftBank Vision Fund, its influence on tech is only growing.  

The Saudi government is not so much sweetening its image as diversifying it. In a sense, this is a foregrounding of what’s been going on at a political level for decades. Democratic governments tend to tread carefully around Saudi activities due to partnerships on energy and security. Support for economic and cultural touchstones will inspire the same conflict in everyday consumers. 

It’s all a little more sophisticated than the fly-by-night self-promotion of 70s dictators. Whether it delivers real change or just further cover, sport must now reckon with its central role in that strategy.