‘It took a lot of money': the Saudi boxing juggernaut comes to Times Square
Teófimo López and Arnold Barboza met in the first of Friday night's three most prominent bouts.
Teófimo López and Arnold Barboza met in the first of Friday night's three most prominent bouts. Photograph: Geoffrey Knott/Matchroom Boxing
On 2 May, Turki al-Sheikh (chairman of the Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority and the architect of his country's Riyadh Season boxing program) planted a flag in Times Square with a fight card styled 'FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves'.
Fatal Fury is a combat video game. The Times Square event was presented by SNK Corporation (the game's developer) and The Ring (now owned by Al-Sheikh) with Golden Boy (Oscar De La Hoya's promotional company) as the lead promoter. Given the dangers inherent in boxing, 'Fatal Fury' is a questionable name for a fight card. But SNK underwrote much of the cost of the promotion and was its primary sponsor.
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The fight card – headlined by three championship bouts – was part of the ongoing Saudi effort to dominate professional boxing. Times Square was chosen as the venue because it's a magnet for media attention as 'the crossroads of the world'. But the event was a study in contradictions.
Related: Saudi-backed boxing card takes over Times Square – in pictures
The most publicized fighter on the card was Ryan Garcia, who has 12.1m followers on Instagram and talent to burn. But 'King Ry' has been plagued by personal demons and last year posted a series of conspiracy-theory rants on social media that focused on satanic ritual sex, aliens and time travel. He recounted being tied down and forced to watch middle-aged fat men raping young boys in Bohemian Grove, referenced his own crucifixion, spoke in tongues and told his followers that a sports drink called Prime contains cyanide and that anyone who drinks Prime is 'working for Satan'.
Garcia recently finished serving a one-year suspension imposed by the New York State Athletic Commission as a consequence of his having tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing drug in conjunction with his fight against Devin Haney at Barclays Center last April. More troubling, on 4 July of last year, Garcia posted on X: 'Fuck all niggers and Fuck all Muslims. You ain't gonna catch me apologizing for nothing. Shoot me if you want. I don't give a fuck. I want everybody to come try me. Somebody, please touch me. I hate niggers, I'm anti-Black. Niggers, I'm KKK, I hate niggers. Hey, let's go bring George Floyd back to life and kill that nigger again.'
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That's not the image Saudi Arabia wants to project to the world, although Garcia was on his good behavior for most of the 'Fatal Fury' promotion and acknowledged at the kick-off press conference, 'This is my first fight to get my respect back.'
There was also a contradiction – later resolved – in that New York City has implemented a 'congestion pricing' program to ease the problem of massive automobile congestion in midtown. Yet the event as initially envisioned threatened to block traffic in Times Square and cause a monstrous traffic jam.
The 'Fatal Fury' fight card was originally planned for Father Duffy Square – a plaza bounded by 45th and 47th Streets between Broadway and Seventh Avenue in Times Square. Initially, the promotion maintained that the event would consist of three 12-round championship fights that started at 5pm and ended by 7pm (which was impossible barring one or more early knockouts). Vehicular traffic in the immediate area would be shut down for an undetermined period of time.
Related: Ryan Garcia stunned by Rolando Romero in seismic Times Square upset
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Asked on 4 March how the promotion had gotten the city to agree to shut down traffic, De La Hoya replied, 'It took a lot of money.'
The original permit application further stated that as many as 999 people would be allowed in a restricted area around the ring. That would include New York State Athletic Commission officials, production personnel, the fighters' camps, selected media and VIP guests. The pedestrian plaza on Broadway between 45th and 48th Streets would be closed and an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people would be within direct eyesight of the ring.
The promotion also rented every available video screen in Times Square with the intention of showing the fights on the screens.
Policing would be overseen by the New York Police Department's Times Square detail with mobile NYPD field forces being brought in from around the city as needed.
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But there was pushback.
The sidewalks in Times Square are jammed on Friday evenings. Tourists, theatergoers and hustlers jockey for space. People stop to watch almost anything. A street performer known as 'the naked cowboy' (who wears nothing but underwear and a cowboy hat while strumming a guitar) draws hundreds of onlookers at any given time. Within that milieu, 'Fatal Fury' was regarded by many in authority as a civic inconvenience.
The Times Square Alliance (TSA) is a charitable 501(c)(3) corporation founded in 1992 whose stated mission is to 'improve and promote Times Square'. Each year it oversees numerous outdoor events, most of which are little noticed. The exception is the New Year's Eve ball-drop ceremony attended by hundreds of thousands of revelers and viewed throughout the world.
The TSA was onboard with the concept of fights in Times Square but wanted to safeguard the interests of its members. As explained by its vice president for communications TJ Witham, 'The Alliance works closely with the city and its agencies on events to make sure all goes smoothly and that our neighborhood can continue to operate while the event is happening.'
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In other words; the Times Square Alliance wanted to minimize disruption and maintain uninterrupted access to theatres, restaurants and other commercial establishments. In late-March, according to a source at the NYPD, the TSA told De La Hoya to stop encouraging fight fans to come to Times Square on 2 May.
No event of this nature had taken place in Times Square before. And the area was a difficult site to work with. This wasn't like producing a Super Bowl half-time show in a contained area set aside in its entirety for rehearsals and the performance itself. The project required that those in charge think outside the box and was a constantly evolving work in progress.
The point person in dealing with the city on behalf of the promotion was Ed Pereira – the CEO of iVisit Media (a global marketing and event-planning company retained by Turki Al-Sheikh to coordinate the production).
The guiding principle was: His Excellency wants this done. Find a way to do it.
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An intricate web of permits had to be woven together. Myriad New York City government departments and agencies had to sign off on the project before the event could take place. The New York City Police Department, the Mayor's Office for Media and Entertainment and the Street Activity Permit Office had particularly large roles to play. In theory, the Mayor's Office of Citywide Event Coordination and Management would coordinate communication and cooperation among the many city entities involved. But much of that burden fell on Pereira and iVisit's permitting partner, Ideko (a New-York-based event production company).
Pereira says that the people in city government who he dealt with were 'cooperative but firm'. Within that framework, there must have been times when he felt as though putting the puzzle pieces together was akin to herding 30 cats across a football field while a game was in progress.
Several significant pivots were required of the promotion.
The city wanted to minimize the impact of the event on traffic and took the position that Broadway and Seventh Avenue would remain open for both vehicular and pedestrian traffic throughout the festivities.
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Also, since putting the fights in Father Duffy Square would have disrupted traffic, the city required that the ring be set up several blocks to the south in a smaller plaza between 43rd and 44th Streets just north of the US Army Recruiting Office. That lowered the number of seats in the ringside area from 999 to approximately 300.
Then the NYPD said it didn't want the fights shown on Times Square video screens because that would cause rubber-necking and impede the flow of traffic. There was, as described by one participant, 'heated conversation' about the issue. The police prevailed.
Two undercard fights were added to the card, bringing the total number of bouts to five. A revised permit application said the fights would take place between 5pm and 10pm.
A modest breeze can turn Times Square into a wind tunnel. Thus, the canopy above the ring had to be specially constructed. If it rained, the boxers under the canopy would stay dry unless there were gusts of wind. Everyone else would get wet. The early-week forecast was for rain on Friday evening. Fortunately, fight night was dry.
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The promotion agreed to pay for private security to ensure that order was maintained inside the enclosed ring area. 'We're police officers, not bouncers,' a NYPD employee explained to the Guardian.
The city also said that final permits wouldn't be officially granted until shortly before the event which gave the city considerable leverage in negotiations and diminished the possibility of a late 'bait and switch' by the promotion.
A 10-foot-high chain link fence covered with a liner so pedestrians and drivers couldn't see inside was erected around the plaza where the fights would take place. From the outside, the area could have been mistaken for a construction site.
Seats inside the ringside area were hard to come by. Some went to New York State Athletic Commission officials and video production personnel. A handful were reserved for fighters' camps with the unusual restriction that a fighter's family and friends (usually limited to five per fighter) were escorted by security personnel into the restricted area just before that fighter's fight and escorted out immediately afterward to make room for the next group of family and friends.
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The rest of the seats were reserved for people who worked for the promotion and VIP guests (who were gifted a fight-night credential in a specially designed box).
The Intercontinental Hotel one block west of Times Square was the staging ground for the fighters on fight night. Each fighter had a police escort from the hotel to the ring – the only time that vehicular traffic was stopped.
The fights themselves were disappointing.
Teófimo López looked exceptionally good in decisioning Arnold Barboza in the first of the evening's three featured bouts. But Lopez was so dominant and Barboza's survival skills were sufficiently good that there wasn't much drama in the encounter. Next, Devin Haney stunk out the joint, winning a 12-round decision by avoiding confrontations against a slow, past-his-prime José Ramírez who couldn't figure out how to cut off the ring against a faster opponent who didn't want to engage. Then Ryan Garcia looked sluggish and out-of-shape in losing a unanimous decision to 8-1 underdog Rolly Romero in a dreary 12-round contest. That spoiled plans for a rematch between Garcia and Haney later this year.
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In sum, the event was an impressive logistical accomplishment. But it was more hype and glitz than special.
Turki al-Sheikh is said to be eyeing 12 July and a yet to be determined date in August for two more fight cards in New York. There's talk that the first of these events will be held in Central Park (possibly at Wollman Rink) and the second in Brooklyn. Fight cards at Alcatraz and Mt Rushmore are in the early planning stages.
And a final thought …
The powers that be behind the Times Square event said again and again that they were doing it because they wanted to do something 'special and iconic for the fans'.
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This wasn't done 'for the fans'. It was done to make the biggest media splash possible by putting a fight card in Times Square. It wasn't a civic event like the New Year's Eve ball drop – a group happening that focuses worldwide attention on New York and brings millions of tourist dollars into the city. It wasn't 'for the people' like the historic Simon & Garfunkel concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park attended by an estimated 500,000 people.
Only a handful of privileged guests had tickets for the Times Square fight card. That's the equivalent of staging Muhammad Ali v George Foreman at President Mobutu Sese Seko's private compound in Zaire in front of several hundred VIP guests instead of in the Stade du 20 Mai before 60,000 screaming fans.
Boxing was 'for the fans' when Joe Louis fought Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium in front of 70,043 enthralled spectators. Boxing was 'for the fans' when Jack Dempsey fought Luis Firpo at the Polo Grounds (82,000 fans), George Carpentier at Boyle's Thirty Acres (80,183 fans) and Gene Tunney at Sesquicentennial Stadium (the staggering total of 120,757 fans). Boxing was 'for the fans' when Don King put 132,247 wildly enthusiastic partisans in seats for Julio Cesar Chavez v Greg Haugen in Mexico City's Azteca Stadium.
And let's not forget; this was a pay-per-view event. An expensive one.
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Earlier this year, Turki al-Sheikh promised fight fans that Riyadh Season would cut the cost of pay-per-view fights significantly and made good on that pledge by pricing a very good fight card headed by the rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol at $25.99 in the United States. But that gesture was short-lived. The Times Square pay-per-view event was priced at $59.99. Alternatively, fans could pay $90 and also see a card headlined by Canelo Álvarez v William Scull (a 25-1 underdog) the following night.
The New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square isn't on pay-per-view.
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