As Fury meets AJ, money doesn’t just talk... it swears

WHEN Bob Dylan came up with his famous adage about the ugly side of capitalism he was thought to have been talking about the business world in general.

However, the quote, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears”, which comes from a song he wrote in 1964, has since been elevated to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations such is its universal appeal as a reference point for any transaction that has a bit off a whiff about it.

For this week’s dodgy deal, look no further than the decision to hold the greatest ever bout in British boxing history in… Saudi Arabia.

The August 14 bout between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury will be the first time two Brits have fought each other to be undisputed world heavyweight champion, with the winner holding all five world title belts – the WBA super, WBO, WBC, IBF and IBO.

If that’s not something to get the juices of the average British boxing fan flowing then I don’t know what will.

So why on earth is Wembley not hosting the mega-fight now that outdoor venues are scheduled to fill up by the end of June? The answer? £100 million for a two-fight deal. That’s the “money talks” bit.

As Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, candidly put it: “If they’re going to be investing this kind of money in the sport, we’ve got to be realists. Everyone’s coming and they’re all coming for one reason – they want the money.”

Boxing has always chased the money, of course. It’s why the marquee lights of the Las Vegas strip became synonymous with the mega-events of the past after they moved away from

New York. But – and this is where the “money swears” bit comes in – why Saudi Arabia, a country with no history of the sport?

The answer is “sports washing”, a term coined for when a country with a terrible human rights record uses sport to “wash away” the stains on its reputation.

Saudi Arabia, of course, is a prolific human rights offender with a litany of abuses to its name, ranging from the jailing of women’s activists to the murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi which the CIA believes was “most likely” ordered by the country’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).

Added to that is the war on Yemen which so far has killed 230,000 people and left millions on the brink of starvation in what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

The clampdown on internal dissent shows no sign of abating, despite claims that MBS would be a “true reformer” when he came to power in 2017. Just last month eight political prisoners received lengthy sentences including Abdulrahman al-sadhan, an aid worker, who was jailed for 20 years for running a parody social media account which was critical of the regime.

So, Saudi Arabia’s reputation has become so toxic that it needs to spend vast amounts of money on sport and entertainment to distract attention from its many abuses.

As Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International, said: “Simply put, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants people around the world to be talking about sport in Saudi Arabia, not the dissidents being locked up after sham trials or the people being tortured in Saudi jails.”

That Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury are taking the Saudi riyal should come as no real surprise.

Both have form for competing in the desert kingdom, where “AJ” won the heavyweight title back from the Mexican, Andy Ruiz Jnr, in December 2019, earning himself £60m.

A month earlier, Fury had made his WWE debut there when he took on Braun Strowman in the Crown Jewel event at the King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh.

Unsurprisingly, neither AJ nor the usually gobby Gipsy King spoke out while they were there about Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses, as Amnesty asks of any celebrity who ignores calls to boycott the country.

It’s not just boxing. The Saudis are also building their first Formula One track at a massive new entertainment city in the desert outside Riyadh, and putting $1 billion on the table to lure the best golfers in the world away from the traditional tours to form a breakaway league.

So you get the picture. In future, when people think of Saudi Arabia the authorities want them to conjure up images of titanic boxing contests, the best golf league in the world and a spectacular F1 circuit – not the torture of activists like Loujain al-hathloul, who had called for women’s right to drive and an end to the country’s male guardianship system.

In Britain, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on boxing, Chris Evans MP, said the UK should have moved “heaven and earth” to get the Joshua-fury fight at Wembley to “put Britain back into the shop window of the world and show we’re open for business”.

It should have been done for the fans, of course, who angrily took to social media when it became clear this wasn’t going to happen, accusing megamillionaires of hosting the fight for “more mega millions”. For instance, @ kevvie70 wrote: “‘1st time 2 Brits fight for the undisputed heavyweight title and they decided to fight in the desert when Wembley stadium was offered. Greed pure and simple.”

Yes, money talked when the big fights of the past went to Las Vegas. But now it swears like a trooper when Saudi Arabia uses the razzmatazz of sport as a veneer for what is really happening in its country.

Shame on Joshua and Fury for taking part in this charade.