The year was 1985. Ric Flair’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” played over the sound system as he made his ring walk to meet Hulk Hogan for the undisputed heavyweight wrestling championship. 150,000 fans had crowded into Chicago’s Soldier Field (which was no small feat since the stadium’s capacity is 67,000) to see the United Wrestling Federation’s main event, capping off an epic 4-hour card of wrestling’s best fighting wrestling’s best.
It was fucking rad. My cousin and I had come up with the Universal Wrestling Federation just months earlier, intent on creating a league featuring all the best wrestlers from every organization fighting regularly. It was a resounding success.
..in my bedroom, using Star Wars action figures as the wrestlers and staging it all on a small suitcase I had fashioned into a makeshift ring.
I was 10. Turki al-Sheikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, is pretty much proposing the same thing for boxing. He’s a grown man.
Actually, the widely reported proposed Saudi boxing league seems to be a larger-scale thing than just one guy’s fantasy organization-- even if that guy does act like he’s commanding his own roster of action figures. If put into place, it could completely change the course of boxing, restructure its foundation, and create brand new historical timelines. Culled from info reported by Reuters and The New York Times, the league, funded by the Saudis’ Public Investment Fund (PIF) to the tune o.
