Boxing journalist John Nash says the Ali Act’s overhaul is moving through Congress with almost no coverage from mainstream or left-leaning outlets, a silence he finds baffling given how neatly the story fits narratives those outlets typically embrace.
Speaking with Luke Thomas, Nash laid out the current state of the bill, which introduces Unified Boxing Organizations (UBOs) that would let promoters operate much like the UFC does, while granting exemptions from existing Ali Act protections for anyone who follows a UBO’s own rules.
Nico Ali Walsh, grandson of Muhammad Ali, recently signed off on the legislation after securing what he described as concessions from TKO’s Nick Khan. Nash argues those concessions are largely cosmetic and that Walsh’s endorsement may have been the very thing needed to clear the bill’s path through the Senate.
What struck both Nash and Thomas most though was the absence of scrutiny from left-of-center press.
“I didn’t really expect mainstream media to cover it, like the Washington Post beat reporters,” Nash said. “I thought there’d be a lot more attention, especially left of center media. I thought, you know, maybe NPR, Breaking Points, David Dayen… Matt Stoller’s done one little thing in the past but really hasn’t covered it like he does other anti=trust issues.”
Nash said the bill contains exactly the ingredients that typically draw progressive attention.
“It ties up everything that these people are supposedly interested in. It ties up labor issues. It ties up antitrust. It ties up crony capitalism. It ties up specifically Trump administration crony capitalism. Puts all that together in one bundle. Man, I thought that’d be very enticing to leftist center media. And yet no one has an interest.”
As an example, Nash pointed to a caller on Sam Seder’s show who phoned in from Mongolia aware of the bill while domestic hosts and audiences remained largely uninformed.
Thomas offered his own theory, drawn from experience doing media hits during the UFC’s White House event.
“I’m talking to people that have like no relationship to this industry at all,” he said. “They are utterly divorced. They don’t have a friend who watches. They don’t have a relative who’s ever wrestled. Nothing.”
He added that a producer at a mainstream outlet once told him plainly that staff at the organization viewed boxing “as trash and for trashy people,” a cultural dismissal Thomas said helps explain the void.
