IT WAS never going to last, the promotional bromance between Riyadh’s Turki Alalshikh, Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren. For all the embarrassing references to this somewhat minor Saudi government official as “His Excellency” this and “His Excellency” that, Alalshikh has unceremoniously dumped both of the latter in favour of a new promotional boxing partnership with the UFC’s mercurial Dana White.

The result is the planned establishment of a new promotion, Zuffa Boxing, replete with its own world championship belt. It is a classic smash and grab, with the objective of ending Hearn and Warren’s stranglehold over the sport, along with that of the traditional sanctioning bodies, the WBC, WBA, WBO and IBF.

This was the Saudi powerbroker’s intention all along — to stuff the mouths of Hearn and Warren with gold and have them open the door to top-flight boxing and let him in. Then, when inside, co-promote with them huge events around the world, paying the fighters involved exorbitant purses to the point where they become more loyal to him than to them, before making his move to steal them away and start his own thing, going forward.

The term that springs to mind is “gangster move.” Speaking of which, one of the more controversial aspects of this affair is the cold manner in which former Hearn protege Conor Benn has left him for the pastures new recently established by Alalshikh. The Saudi flashed the cash — he showed Benn the rose garden, if you will — and Benn, whose embrace of an Essex gangster persona has long made him hard to warm to, has jumped ship.

It is no secret that Eddie Hearn damaged his reputation in mounting a defence of Conor Benn back when the latter failed two back-to-back drug tests in 2022. These came in the context of the lead-up to the first attempt to place him and Eubank Jr in a boxing ring together. It was not until two days before the fight was due to take place in London, and in the teeth of the British Boxing Board of Control withdrawing its sanctioning of the event, that Hearn finally relented and called the event off.

Then we learn that while an outcast for a couple of years thereafter, Benn received substantial funds from Hearn in the form of a loan to help keep him afloat. The upshot is that Eddie Hearn and Matchroom made the cardinal mistake of confusing business and friendship. In failing to secure Benn with another contract after his previous one had expired, they left the door open to him being poached, precisely as he has just been for a one-fight deal in return for the alleged outrageous sum of $15 million.

Fifteen million to a fighter who has yet to win so much as an English area title — never mind a British, European or Commonwealth — is a metric of how out of whack the sport has become. Riding the wave of his father Nigel’s name and legacy has allowed Benn the younger to circumvent the process. Such a scenario corrodes the sport’s credibility in the long term, while in the short it presents a challenge to those within the sport who still retain a residue of respect for its traditional ethos.

Tyson Fury is another who has happily taken the Saudi cash in recent years, appearing on Riyadh-backed cards while remaining aligned with his long-time British promoter, Frank Warren, with both Fury and Benn making their first appearance under the aegis of Zuffa Boxing at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on April 11.

Fury is set to face the huge Russian, Arslanbek Makhmudov, as the main event in a non-title bout, while Benn is up against former two-time super lightweight champion, Regis Prograis, as chief undercard support.

That Alalshikh and Dana White have made London the location of their first major event together is tantamount to parking their tanks on Hearn and Warren’s lawn. But if they believed they could do so on a friction free basis, they were wrong. Frank Warren, it is understood, has embarked on legal action and is suing the Saudi to the tune of a whopping one billion dollars, citing loss of earnings due to breach of contract.

The game is the game, as they say, with this particular game as sleaze-ridden as any. Nobody in boxing could ever have imagined that Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren would ever be perceived as underdogs fighting to maintain the sport’s integrity. But there we have it, as both find themselves in exactly that role in the face of a concerted effort to turn the sport at its elite level into a wholly owned subsidiary of Riyadh, with all that represents.

Greed is a helluva thing and boxing is a helluva sport. One former world champion who has and continues to exemplify both is Floyd Mayweather Jr. Having burned through ring earnings amounting to half a billion dollars, the 49-year-old has returned to the gym to prepare to make a comeback. First in line is a scheduled exhibition bout against an ageing Mike Tyson, followed by a rematch against his old rival Manny Pacquiao, himself now 47.

What a travesty, and what an indictment. Mayweather extended himself throughout his storied pro career in curating the image of a man for whom excess was the elixir of life. Flash cars, watches, mansions, designer clothes, a private jet, Mayweather gleefully immersed himself in the culture and lifestyle of bling. Nothing was sacred or off limits in the process, as empty of spirit and shallow of mind, he bragged and he bragged about how much money he had and how much of it he was spending at any given point.

Now he’s widely reported to be broke.

Capitalism is a system, both economic and value, which places a premium on validation that is rooted not in how you are but on how you appear. In this dynamic it traps and entangles its victims. In the ring Mayweather was one of the best to ever do it — indeed a master of the art, no less. But out of the ring is where he came undone and unstuck.

Perhaps there is a moral here. Perhaps not. What cannot be gainsaid is that money ain’t funny and in this life, you really do reap what you sow.