Spencer Brown sees a noticeable shift coming to Saudi boxing. Tyson Fury’s manager expects the massive purses to shrink, with fewer mega cards happening each year even though the Kingdom plans to stick around. From his perspective, the current spending pace simply cannot hold, creating a whole new reality for fighters across the sport.

“I think that the money has to go down because nobody can keep paying that sort of money,” Brown told The Ariel Helwani Show.

He made sure to dismiss rumors that Saudi investment is drying up completely. Instead, he sees Riyadh scaling back the volume of blockbuster events.

He pointed to Fury’s December 11 meeting with Anthony Joshua in Cardiff, a deal he helped put together, calling it one of the final spectacles of its kind. Moving forward, he predicts fans will see just one or two events of that size annually. While speaking as a dealmaker rather than an official spokesperson for Riyadh Season, his perspective carries genuine weight.

“I think this is one of the last of the big fights we’re going to see. I think you might get one or two big fights a year in future,” Brown said about the Fury vs. Anthony Joshua clash.

The real trouble will be convincing boxers to accept smaller checks again. Once a fighter pockets Saudi riches, traditional offers funded by gate receipts or pay-per-view sales feel like an insult. A matchup can make all the sense in the world on paper, yet stall out completely if someone insists on another monster payday.

That dynamic could trigger prolonged layoffs. Fighters risk sitting around, holding out hope for an invitation to the rare marquee card. Veterans near the end of their careers do not have time to waste on the sidelines, but the temptation of holding out for life-changing money remains strong.

A market cool-down could ultimately force promoters to build fights around realistic budgets again. For that model to succeed, fighters who want to stay active will have to adjust their financial expectations accordingly.

Fighters who grew accustomed to eight-figure guarantees for low-demand, mismatched events are going to hit a wall of stubborn inactivity before reality sets in.

Human nature and boxing economics suggest the immediate reaction won’t be humility. It will be entitlement.

When a boxer makes $10 million to $20 million fighting an unheralded opponent in an atmosphere with minimal gate pressure, that number ceases to be a windfall in their mind. It becomes their baseline. Returning to a traditional promotional model where their guarantee is tied directly to pay-per-view buys and ticket sales in London, New York, or Las Vegas feels like a drastic demotion.

The fallout is likely to split fighters into distinct groups:

First come the holdouts. The biggest names with heavy bank accounts will sit on the sidelines, convinced that their manager or promoter simply isn’t trying hard enough, or that Riyadh will eventually circle back when a headline slot opens.

They will post training clips on social media, call out other stars, demand absurd splits, and reject viable market-rate offers. Some will sit out twelve to eighteen months before grasping that the sovereign wealth subsidy has actually contracted. For aging stars, this wait will quietly run out their athletic primes.

Second comes the rude awakening for mid-tier names. Fighters who received inflated purses simply to fill out stacked undercards will discover that traditional promoters have zero appetite to subsidize them. If a fighter does not shift tickets in their home market or drive subscriptions, domestic promoters cannot afford them at Saudi rates.

These fighters will face a blunt ultimatum: accept pay cuts of 60 to 75 percent, or retire. Those who need money to maintain luxury spending habits will swallow their pride, sign realistic contracts, and return to competitive, grinding fights where they actually have to take risks.

Ultimately, the market correction will be painful. Boxing spent years living in an artificial economy where risk and commercial return were completely divorced. Once the spigot tightens, the fighters who want to stay relevant will have no choice but to get back in the gym and fight each other on realistic budgets, while the ones chasing long-gone purses will simply wait themselves into irrelevance.

Having previously been considered as the pound-for-pound king, Canelo Alvarez is on a quest to prove that he remains amongst the elite, and the four-division world champion has revealed his top five active pound-for-pound fighters.

Many fight fans considered Canelo to be the pound-for-pound number one between 2019 and 2022, as he continued his long unbeaten streak since a 2013 loss to Floyd Mayweather and progressed through the weight divisions.

In November 2019, Alvarez dethroned WBO light-heavyweight world champion Sergey Kovalev to claim world honours in a fourth division, before moving back down to super-middleweight and capturing all four 168lb titles in an 11-month spell to become boxing’s first undisputed super-middleweight champion.

Canelo has since suffered defeats to both Dmitry Bivol and Terence Crawford and the 36-year-old now finds himself without a belt, but he is set for a world title challenge at the end of the month, when he heads to Saudi Arabia and attempts to dethrone Christian Mbilli.

Speaking to DAZN Boxingahead of that title bid, Canelo revealed his current top five boxers in the sport, noticeably opting not to include himself.

“My top five pound-for-pound fighters are [Oleksandr] Usyk, [Naoya] Inoue, Bivol, Shakur [Stevenson] and Gervonta [Davis].”

Canelo’s selections may come as no surprise, with Usyk and Inoue viewed as the top two fighters on most people’s pound-for-pound lists.

Bivol currently holds three of the four world titles at light heavyweight, making the next defence of those belts against Callum Smith in December, while Stevenson looks poised for a showdown with Devin Haney later this year.

As for Davis, he may be the surprise inclusion in Canelo’s list, with ‘Tank’ having not competed since March 2025 when he was held to a controversial draw with Lamont Roach.

As 2027 approaches, one of the most in-demand fights in the sport is an undisputed super-bantamweight title showdown between pound-for-pound king Naoya Inoue and three-weight world champion Jesse Rodriguez, but it now appears as though the proposed event is in serious jeopardy.

Inoue has taken some well-deserved time off following on from his career-best win over Junto Nakatani back in May, but ‘The Monster’ is keen to return to action in spring 2027, for an outing that many presumed would be against Rodriguez.

Meanwhile, ‘Bam’ has moved up to bantamweight and captured the WBA world title, but his trainer Robert Garcia made it clear that he wants another fight at 118lbs before moving up again and challenging for Inoue’s 122lb crown.

As of yet, there is no confirmed fight date for a mooted meeting between Rodriguez and fellow bantamweight titleholder Christian Medina (WBO), but the duo are expected to collide in either December or January, despite Inoue threatening to move on from Rodriguez if the American is not ready to fight him in March.

Still, just days ago, ‘The Monster’ revealed that he is indeed preparing for a meeting with the 26-year-old southpaw, as per Source of Boxing.

🚨 Naoya Inoue says he’s preparing with Bam Rodriguez in mind for his next fight 👀

“Yes, I’m preparing with Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez in mind.” pic.twitter.com/dqu2VtCKNP

— Source of Boxing (@Sourceofboxing) October 10, 2026

“Yes, I’m preparing with Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez in mind.”

However, Inoue has now said on X that he is unwilling to sit around and wait for Rodriguez, instead stating that he has begun to prepare for a move into the featherweight division. This comment was perhaps motivated by Garcia recently suggesting April or May for the fight.

I don’t want to wait around for Bam, so I’ll start preparing to move to featherweight 👆🏼

— Naoya Inoue (@naoyainoue_410) October 13, 2026

“I’m not going to sit around waiting for Bam, so I’m starting prep for featherweight too.”

In terms of which of the 126lb champions Inoue could face on his divisional debut, New York’s Bruce Carrington (WBC) would make the most sense for a stateside appearance, whilst Inoue has also previously mentioned IBF titleholder Angelo Leo as an option.

Another option could come this Saturday, as fellow Japanese featherweight title hopeful Tomoki Kameda challenges for Brandon Figueroa’s WBA crownso should he be successful, a tantalising all-Japanese featherweight world title affair may become Inoue’s most obvious route to the throne.

Since his latest comments, ‘Bam’s promoter Eddie Hearn has taken to social media to respond, saying they are still willing and ready to make the fight happen.