This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.themmadraw.com What changed for our favorite benevolent boxing dictator, Turki Alalshikh, in the year 2026? Three years ago, the enforcer from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was buying whatever boxing fights and promoters he wanted loyalty from. Everyone, including press writers, started calling him His Excellency. 2025 looked to be an unstoppable campaign for Saudi Arabia flexing its muscle in combat sports, thanks to their alliance with TKO. Check out our latest Mad Squabbles YouTube content and subscribe to our channel. A year later, everything has changed. But why? Ask most hardcore boxing fans on social media, and they’ll come up with a myriad of reasons. Poor health. Ungrateful promoters like Eddie Hearn. Fight politics. Greed. Boxing is a dying business. The usual excuses. What changed was the condition of Gulf State financing thanks to the brutal and swift fallout from the US/Iran war. The biggest targets have been US military bases, oil tankers, and Aramco. War has hit the ruling class where it hurts the most. This week’s edition of The Mad Squabbles MMA Draw podcast focuses on how quickly fortunes have changed for the billionaire sports investment class thanks to the Iranian government and their associates inflicting hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage. The kind of damage that can impact the Kingdom’s ability to fulfill its commitments. In our little corner of the world, this includes Zuffa Boxing. It also includes the escalating financial stakes of the Paramount-WBD merger, which has a significant backstop from the Gulf States. Betting against the Saudis a year ago looked impossible to imagine. War changed everything. News and inspiration This week’s podcast relies upon several mainstream media articles, both old and new, to tell a much larger story about how the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia mainstreamed its investments into the Western hemisphere, only to find itself clawing back some of those investments because of their belief in the United States as a military protectorate. * The New Yorker (April 2021): Ari Emanuel takes on the world * The Guardian (November 2022): The Godfather, Saudi-style * The Athletic/New York Times (April 2025): Turki Al-Sheikh and the two sides of boxing’s new king These three articles are incredible. If you’ve never read them, now is your chance to hear all about these stories on this week’s MMA Draw podcast. It’s been approximately a decade since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman grabbed control of the Kingdom with his enforcer Turki. The COVID crash provided the Kingdom a major opportunity to debt-finance global expansion plans into sports & entertainment. Now that checkbook is being severely threatened by the Iranians. * India Today (September 2026): Saudi Aramco Jizan oil hub hit again * Reuters (August 2026): Yemen’s Houthis say they attacked Najran airport, Aramco facilities in Saudi Arabia * Reuters (August 2026): Aramco says US-Iran war has cost the global market 2.6 billion barrels of oil * Reuters (August 2026): Iran warns Gulf states: tell Trump to desist or we hit you hard * Bloomberg (August 2026): Saudis explore about $8 billion dollars in loans Life comes at you fast. The longer the Paramount-WBD merger transaction drags out, the more money it’s going to cost the players involved. The longer the war between the US and Iran lasts, the more complicated petroleum-based financing becomes for the Kingdom. In a totally normal and sane world, none of this would matter in our little corner of combat sports. But you can thank TKO for becoming a Boeing-style government contractor and political mercenary that is tied into the major sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf States. You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. Ways to listen to this episode This is a subscriber-only episode. The first 30 minutes are free for everyone; the full hour is for paid subscribers. PAID SUBSCRIBERS The easy way is the Substack app: https://substack.com/app Install it, sign in with the email address you subscribed with, and the full episode is waiting. Prefer your usual podcast app? Set your private feed up once, and every full episode arrives automatically from then on: 1. Open https://www.themmadraw.com/account 2. Copy the URL under “Private podcast feed” 3. Paste it into Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or whatever you use. It’s tied to your account — please don’t share it. Seeing a 30-minute version of this episode? That’s the public preview feed. Use your private feed instead. Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024. Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com. Contact Zach: fightopinion at protonmail dot com.
