World Boxing Super Series: The Muhammad Ali Trophy and $50m up for grabs



The World Boxing Super Series has been hailed as the "Champions League of boxing".

The new event offers a $50m prize fund, a trophy named after Muhammad Ali and its tournament format aims to deliver a flow of easy-to-follow storylines for fans.

Its first fight arrives on Saturday, so what impact will the venture have? Will George Groves contest a huge all-British fight with Chris Eubank Jr? And will we get a unified champion?

Boxing, with its many weight divisions and multitude of belts can be confusing. The World Boxing Super Series aims to be anything but.

It will run two tournaments, one for cruiserweights and one for super-middleweights. Within each, eight men will compete from a quarter-final stage through to an eventual winner being crowned in each weight category.

Along the way, if a fighter meets an opponent who is currently a world champion, that belt will be on the line.

Quarter-finals aim to be completed by the end of October, semi-finals by the close of February 2018 and winners decided by May.

Simple then? But if you are a lover of boxing's trash talk and heated rivalries, fear not as already they seem set to prosper in the format.

At the final news conference before Saturday's first cruiserweight bout, Marco Huck pushed WBO world champion Aleksandr Usyk, prompting a furious Usyk to state he will "bury" his rival.



Comosa AG - the company which owns the event - is an amalgamation of firms, with former Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer and European based Sauerland Promotions heavily involved.

"The tournament will have so many storylines," Kalle Sauerland told BBC Sport. "It's not just to find a winner, it's to generate fun and excitement through storytelling."

And the soap opera began at July's draw where seeded boxers, faced with their unseeded rivals, picked their quarter-final opponents.

Sauerland added: "I've been at events since and fighters have been talking, asking one another 'why did you pick me?'

"Fans in boxing always ask 'why is this guy not fighting that guy?' "There are no politics here, eight guys, four seeded, four unseeded, the rest we let them do themselves.

"This is a project which is destined to become the Champions League of boxing. It was a big statement for us to put this event out there. I think we have over delivered in terms of fighters."

Middleweight Brits and cruiserweight unification