One Tweet, Seven Fights, And A Lot Of Noise
Right then. Mike Coppinger has published the list that every promoter in boxing spent the weekend pretending they had not seen.
Turki Alalshikh told him which fights are on his wishlist. Seven of them. Tyson Fury against Anthony Joshua. Jai Opetaia against David Benavidez. Shakur Stevenson against Devin Haney. Naoya Inoue against Jesse Rodriguez. A Terence Crawford and Canelo Alvarez rematch. Filip Hrgovic against Rico Verhoeven. And Crawford against Ryan Garcia.
Make no mistake, when this man writes a wishlist it is not a wishlist. It is a rough draft of next year's calendar with the dates left blank.
The Ones That Are Genuinely Brilliant
Opetaia-Benavidez is already halfway done. Benavidez climbed into the ring in Las Vegas seconds after Opetaia had taken Noel Mikaelian apart and said Cinco de Mayo. Opetaia said done, it's done. That is two men agreeing to a fight in public with no lawyer in the room, which in modern boxing counts as a signed contract.
Inoue against Rodriguez is the one the purists will lose their minds over. Inoue at super-bantamweight has been operating on a different plane for years, and Rodriguez is the only man below 126lb with the timing and the nerve to trouble him. That is levels versus levels, not levels versus a mandatory.
Stevenson-Haney has been talked about for so long that it has started to feel like folklore. Both men have agreed a catchweight on social media already. Neither of them has a signature. Put it in Riyadh and it happens.
Hrgovic-Verhoeven is the outlier on the list and I actually love it. Verhoeven took Oleksandr Usyk into an eleventh round in only his second professional fight, which is not something you do by accident. Hrgovic just stopped Moses Itauma when the entire sport had already written his obituary. Two heavyweights with something to prove is a proper fight.
The One Nobody Asked For
Let's not beat around the bush about Crawford-Canelo two.
Crawford went up two divisions, outboxed Canelo over twelve rounds, retired as a five-weight champion with an undefeated record and walked off into the sunset. It was one of the great nights of this era. What exactly does running it back add, other than a number?
Canelo has to get past Christian Mbilli on October 31 before anyone can even discuss it. If he does not, the fight dies on its own. If he does, it is still a rerun of a film where we all know the ending.
The One That Is Pure Money
Crawford-Garcia, on the other hand, is a much better commercial idea than it is a competitive one.
Garcia is coming off ninety-odd seconds of work against Conor Benn and he is the most watchable man in the sport when he is switched on. Crawford is thirty-nine in a couple of weeks and has not boxed since last year. It would sell enormously. It would also be a technical mismatch in Crawford's favour right up until the moment age decides otherwise, which is exactly why it is dangerous and exactly why people would pay for it.
Fury-Joshua Is Still The Only One That Matters Here
Put it at the top of the list for a reason. Fury's manager Spencer Brown has said it is one hundred per cent happening, that Cardiff and Wembley are both still in the running, and that December is the preferred window.
Eddie Hearn keeps saying the same thing from the other side. Frank Warren is onboard. The hold-up has never been the fighters, it has been the geography, and the fact that this fight appears on Alalshikh's own list tells you the Saudi money is not insisting on a Saudi venue.
That is the single most encouraging detail in the whole thing and almost nobody has picked up on it. If you know, you know.
Luke’s Verdict
Seven fights. Five of them I would pay for tomorrow, one of them is a rerun, one of them is a lottery ticket.
My call: Fury-Joshua is the first of the seven to be officially announced, and it happens in Britain before the end of the year. Opetaia-Benavidez follows it for Cinco de Mayo because that one is already agreed in front of a live crowd, and Stevenson-Haney is the one that drags on longest because it always does.
The list is a good list. The question, as ever, is whether boxing can get out of its own way long enough to make it. More on the heavyweight picture on our news page.