TKO Boxing unveils plans for ’12 cards per year’ and ‘super fights’ starting with Alvarez vs. Crawford

TKO’s foray into the boxing world has left many fans wondering what the future looks like for the sport. TKO president and chief operating officer Mark Shapiro gave some insight into what that future looks like.

TKO Group Holdings, the company that owns both the UFC and WWE, partnered with Saudi Arabia and Turki Alalshikh for the new boxing promotion, with TKO handling the logistics and Saudi Arabia and Alalshikh providing financial backing.

After the recent card headlined by Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and William Scull, which Alvarez won by decision to become undisputed super middleweight champion for a second time, Alalshikh announced that Alvarez would face former junior welterweight and welterweight undisputed champion Terence Crawford on Sept 12.

Crawford vs. Alvarez will be the headliner for the first TKO Boxing event. A fight between such accomplished fighters fits the “superfight” tag, which Shapiro said would be an occurrence “one to four” times each year across a schedule of 12 cards per year.

“I would just tell you that we’re expecting with the boxing organization that we’re putting on an average of call it 12 fights a year, 12 cards a year for each of the next five years,” Shapiro said during a quarterly financial call. “[We’re] still putting that plan together and obviously working hand in hand with our friends from Saudi.”

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“Irrespective of those, we will look to do anywhere from one to four sort of superfights per year, we’ll see how that plays out. But obviously, we would term the Canelo/Crawford September matchup as one of those. And then on that undercard, we would have a number of those undercard fights that would likely air on the television partner/media partner we would have for our newly formed boxing organizations.”

Shapiro further clarified that, “The Saudis are funding what would be these superfight cards. We’ll work with them on media rights deals and take a commission.” TKO would keep the superfight cards and the other 12 cards as “two separate businesses.”

Futher details on TKO Boxing, including the official name for the promotion, are still to be revealed. Among the most interesting details still to come are what fighters will be a part of the promotion, since most of the biggest names, world champions and most experienced fighters are already tied up in promotional deals with various established boxing promotions.