“If this bill is passed in its current form, it should not have my grandfather’s name on it, as it would betray the principles his Act was created to protect.”
Nico Ali Walsh was testifying against H.R. 4624 — the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act of 2026. The bill cleared the House on voice vote on March 24. It’s now with Ted Cruz’s committee, waiting to be shaped into a Senate version. And almost nobody outside of boxing is paying attention to what it actually does.
They should be.
What the bill actually does
Since 2000, federal boxing law has been built on a single rule: the person promoting a fighter cannot also be the person ranking him, sanctioning his title, or owning the belt he’s chasing. That’s the Ali Act. It’s not elegant, it hasn’t fixed everything, and boxing is still a mess — four sanctioning bodies, opaque rankings, the best rarely fighting the best. Fair criticism.
The Revival Act does not repeal that separation. It does something more clever. It creates a new legal category called a Unified Boxing Organization — a UBO — that sits next to the old system. A UBO can promote fights, set rankings, sanction titles, and own the belts, all under one roof. You know, the thing the 2000 law was specifically written to stop.
Congress isn’t replacing the Ali Act. It’s punching a hole through it and calling the hole optional.
Congress isn’t replacing the Ali Act. It’s punching a hole through it and calling the hole optional.
The pitch
Nick Khan — WWE president, TKO board member, and the face of Zuffa Boxing in front of the committee — made the case for the hole. His argument, simplified: boxing is broken, fans can’t follow it, young fighters can’t build careers in it, and a league-style structure with centralised rankings and a Paramount broadcast deal would fix all three. Eighty million subscribers. Trading cards. Video games. Merch. A clear path from prospect to champion. Opt-in, not mandatory. Nothing is being taken away.
That is not a bad pitch. Boxing actually is broken in most of the ways he described. I spend every week talking to people who love this sport, and the single most common complaint isn’t that fighter pay is too low — it’s that fans can’t tell who’s a real contender, who’s a paper champion, and whether the fight they just watched had any consequence. Khan diagnosed the disease correctly. The question is whether his cure is a cure or an acquisition.
The counter
Oscar De La Hoya and Ali Walsh went at that question directly.
De La Hoya’s frame was blunt: this is a power shift, not a safety reform. Allowing one entity to own the promoter, the sanctioning body, and the ranking committee is the exact conflict of interest the 2000 law was written to prevent. That it’s now “opt-in” doesn’t matter if a UBO controls the biggest broadcast deal, the biggest belts, and the only realistic path to visibility — fighters aren’t opting in, they’re funneling in.
Ali Walsh delivered the number that should end the debate on its own. UFC fighters receive less than 20% of the company’s revenue. Boxers currently receive up to 80%. The model being pitched to Congress as fighter-friendly is the same structural model that produced the lowest athlete-revenue share in major American combat sports. You do not get to stand in front of a Senate committee and sell the UFC blueprint as a fighter-empowerment bill.
Then there’s the Saudi piece. Zuffa Boxing is funded in large part by the Saudi General Entertainment Authority. De La Hoya flagged LIV Golf as a warning — a sport restructured around one funding source, then left holding the bag when the check slowed. That’s a real risk. It’s also a clean sportswashing concern that nobody on the pro-bill side wanted to address in public.
What I actually think
I run a fantasy boxing site. I spend my weeks watching cards, reading rankings, and arguing with fans about who should fight who. So I’ll say this as plainly as I can.
Khan is right that the sport needs structural reform. Everyone who watches boxing knows this. But the Revival Act is not reform — it’s consolidation sold as reform. You do not fix a sport with too many kings by crowning a new one with more power than any of them ever had. You fix it by forcing mandatory defences, by demanding transparent rankings, by putting teeth in the sanctioning bodies that already exist, and by protecting the one thing the 2000 Act got genuinely right: nobody gets to own the belts and the fighters chasing them at the same time.
The best version of boxing is not a league. It’s a marketplace with rules that actually get enforced. Leagues are good for investors. Marketplaces are good for fighters.
The best version of boxing is not a league. It’s a marketplace with rules that actually get enforced. Leagues are good for investors. Marketplaces are good for fighters.
What happens next
Cruz said he’ll introduce a Senate version of the bill and invited stakeholders to submit changes. That’s where this gets decided — not on the House floor, not in press releases, but in the next draft. Ali Walsh has already launched the Ali Act Preservation Alliance to organise the opposition. Golden Boy is in. Top Rank has signalled concerns. TKO is spending real money and has serious political muscle.
The fight isn’t over. It’s just moved venues.
If you care about boxing — the actual sport, not the podcast version — pay attention to whose name is on the final bill and whose name isn’t. The grandson of the man whose name started all of this just told the Senate they don’t have his family’s permission.
That should count for something.