Tim Bradley took to his soapbox this week to lecture Turki Al-Sheikh, telling him he’s done nothing to improve boxing other than put on a few “good fights”. The team believes that once Turki leaves the sport, things will be just as bad as they were before he arrived.
Commissioner Callout
Bradley says he wants Turki to create a commissioner-like person who “oversees” the sport in the same way as the NFL and NBA. Those leagues have appointed commissioners who oversee the management and travel of the teams.
It is unclear whether Turki would want to take on that kind of responsibility, as it would be a lot of hard work. He seems more interested in 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 be strong and get their own promoter or whatever,” Tim Bradley said on social media, lecturing Turki Al-Sheikh. “Why don’t you give us the World Boxing Council, someone who oversees everything [sport]? I know we have the WBC, but you know what I mean.
“Someone to watch like the NFL [i.e., Commissioner for management of the sport, appointed by the teams in the league] and the NBA [commissioner, similar to the NFL, appointed by teams].
“You can be based in America, and you can be based there [Saudi Arabia]and they can all work together to get boxing back on track. If you do things like that, then you get my attention. If you do such things, then I will stand behind you.
“I’ll stand behind you, Turki, really, because that’s what boxing really needs. When you leave, Turki, when you decide to leave, we’ll go back to the beginning. You fought great battles [e.g., Fury vs. Usyk & Beterbiev vs. Bivol]but boxing didn’t change anything. You haven’t changed s***.
Fixing the future of boxing
“So my boxing point of view is different from all of you. You get the fights you want, which is great. That’s fantastic, but it won’t solve all the problems boxing has. We need one governing body that oversees the entire sport,” Bradley said.
Tim Bradley says if Turki REALLY wants to save boxing 🥊, he “needs to form a union for old and new fighters and have boxing under one governing body that governs the entire sport like the NBA and NFL.
Turk is just putting a band-aid on the boxing-
🎥 @Timbradleyjr #Boxing pic.twitter.com/IRDdpYgurH
— Pound4Pound (@Pound4our4Pound) January 17, 2025
In the past, promoters around the world put on a lot of expensive, low-quality cards and much of the interest in boxing disappeared. Too many events were put behind a PPV paywall, preventing fans from watching the fights unless they were willing to pay $70 to watch mostly mismatches.
Promoters only made matters worse by always pitting their fighters against opponents they couldn’t win. This still happens today, and we’ve even seen it on some of Turki’s cards with promoters stacking undercard fights with no competitive value.
