Hearn Criticizes Alalshikh’s ‘One Belt’ Plan, Claiming It Will Limit Opportunities

Promoter Eddie Hearn says Turki Alalshikh and Dana White’s plan to have one champion per division in the entire sport would prevent many fighters from getting the opportunity to fight for a belt. Turki and White’s plan is not a fix to save the sport. It’s going to make it worse.

(Credit: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing)

Career Freeze

With just one champion, it would take forever for contenders to get title shots, especially if there are repeated rematches like we’re seeing with Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol. The contenders’ careers are frozen while waiting to get their shot at a title, they age, and they miss out.

Turki’s idea of having one champion per weight division will stunt the sport, preventing many fighters from fighting for belts and capturing them. What could further hurt the sport is allowing fighters to move up multiple divisions to skip the line to fight for a world title without competing in that weight class.

Line Jump

That’s what Turki is setting up for Terence Crawford to move up from 154 to jump ahead of the contenders at 168 to challenge Canelo Alvarez for his WBA, WBC, and WBO super middleweight titles. It’s just so unfair to the fighters that compete at 168. If Turki continues to do stuff like that in the future, having one belt per division is going to be cancer for the fighters that compete in his league. The fighters are supposed to be all equal, but as we see here, some are more equal than others. Will this be the norm for Turki’s new league?

“One belt in boxing isn’t revolutionary. It’s been discussed many times. Until now, we haven’t had the financial firepower to make that happen until now,” said Eddie Hearn to Fight Hub TV, reacting to Turki Alalshikh and Dana White’s plan for just one belt per division in the sport.

Turki has the money to try to change the sport so that there’s one belt, his, for a weight class, but it’s unrealistic without the four sanctioning bodies going out of business. It would require not only that, but also for all the promoters outside his company to give up.

The only thing Turki and Dana White can do is fragment the sport more, with their league. They’ll likely target the talented fighters that other promoters develop, letting them do the hard work, and then offering them big money to come over to their league.

In other words, they would be like wolves, watching fighters outside of their company and looking to bring them over. Even doing that, they would fail to create one belt that is recognized as the only one. The sport would be just as fragmented as it is now. It just makes me think these guys don’t have clue one.

Title Fight?

“I wouldn’t underestimate the value of the world championship belt, the four belts [IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO] to a fighter. The legacy and the history that comes behind, and the fact that their heroes had those belts around their waist.

“Also, sometimes when there’s only one champion, other people don’t really get an opportunity to fight for a world championship belt. I’m really a big believer in finding out who the best is. So, if there’s a way to do that, I’m for it as well.

“I don’t think it’s [boxing] broken, but when people talk about a fix, it’s certainly not a quick fix. With His Excellency and his financial firepower, maybe that can happen in time,” said Hearn.