The heavyweight title match scheduled for Saturday in Saudi Arabia is examined in more detail by Gavan Casey.
Usyk will take Joshua’s soul in an event that lacks one
What if it’s not about the mass executions, the subjugation of women as citizens, the chemical castration of homosexuals, the torture and public floggings, the denial of free speech and the criminalization of protests, the killing of Jamal Khashoggi by state agents, or the country’s major contribution to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen? but what about the relationships we develop as we move into the post-hydrocarbon era?
A female PHD student from Leeds University who had visited her family in Saudi Arabia earlier this week was given a 34-year prison term for maintaining a Twitter account on which she followed and retweeted activists and dissidents.
The latest casualty of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s campaign of repression, which includes targeting Twitter users, is 34-year-old Salma al-Shehab, a mother of two young children.
Coincidentally, through the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of his nation, Bin Salman indirectly owns a significant portion of Twitter (PIF).
Salma al-Shehab was detained in solitary confinement on several occasions during her trial, according to a report published in The Guardian on Tuesday.
She attempted to speak to the judge in private at one point about how she had been treated while being held. She didn’t want to tell her father about the specifics. It was not permitted to make this attempt to talk with the judge.
The largest sporting event of the year will take place in Saudi Arabia again tomorrow, this time a heavyweight boxing bout between Ukrainian pound-for-pound phenomenon Oleksandr Usyk and British star Anthony Joshua.
Usyk will be attempting to retain the titles Joshua lost to him in September.
The fight will be “held under the patronage of HRH Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and in line with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 ambitions,” according to a press release from the event’s promoters, Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing, from July.
It will be “a second for Joshua in Saudi Arabia” after his successful title rematch with Andy Ruiz Jr. in 2019.
The press release was 791 words long and provided confirmation of the fight’s Saturday ticket information.
These phrases are devoted to Saudi Arabia’s seeming socioeconomic advancement in excess of half the time.
Fear not, Matchroom’s release makes a concerted effort to allay any lingering questions about Vision 2030: it is a social-reform blueprint that “aims to improve the quality of life of residents and visitors to the Kingdom by developing a vibrant environment for participation and spectatorship in sports and entertainment while aiming to transform the Kingdom for a post-hydrocarbon era.
With higher participation rates, investments in elite athletes, a year-round sporting calendar, and a rapidly expanding commercial sector to support this infrastructure, the country has become one of the world’s fastest growing sports nations.
One of the Saudi co-organizers of the event, Khalid bin Abdulaziz, says in the Matchroom press release that he is “glad to secure this event for our country as it continues its tremendous transformation,” and this attitude is repeated again throughout.
James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, recently told Martyn Ziegler in an interview for The Times that Saudi Arabia’s sudden multi-billion-dollar incursion into major sporting events is really an attempt to gain “soft power” by becoming the go-to sports hub in the Gulf region rather than to clean up its international reputation.
This distinction wasn’t something I had previously thought about, but it makes sense given how brazenly the monarchy plans to arrest a lady for using Twitter…
