good to be with you. you know, back in 2019, saudi arabia really put itself on the sporting map when it secured the right to host the biggest boxing match of them all, the heavyweight championship of the world. it s been widely reported that the fight which saw anthonyjoshua beat andy ruinr cost the host the best part of $100 million in hosting fees and prize money. so i ve been speaking to one of the men behind that deal, the chief executive of matchroom boxing, frank smith. a real pleasure having you on my show. and frank, let me start with this, because in many ways, you are where this saudi investment in sport really started, the anthonyjoshua versus andy ruinr fight back in 2019. that was something of a watershed moment for saudi investment in sport. so, frank, i ve got to ask you, how did it come about that riyadh hosted a world championship fight? we ve had a lot of approaches over the years from saudi entities to bring events over. and we had an approach from prince khalid aziz
to bring events over. and we had an approach from prince khalid aziz around bringing anthonyjoshua. and, you know, i think the truth is we ve been approached, as i say, on so many occasions that you don t quite believe it because you have so many people come on to you and say we want to bring a huge event. and this isn tjust a saudi, but across the middle east, you go down the path of six months of discussing and then it doesn t get anywhere. so i don t think we really believed it at the time when this discussion came up, it was only when it moved very quickly within. we had to make a decision whether we took this event to cardiff. so i think that helped, the fact we were in a rush meant that these negotiations couldn t be prolonged. we gave them very strict deadlines and they and they stuck to it. and that showed that they had huge intent to bring massive sporting events to the region. and, frank, when you re looking after an athlete, what do you think about? because i m wondering, is