Boxing may have its fight of the year already sewed up for 2026. And it\u2019s not something that took place in the ring, it happened on social media between Luke Thomas and Mike Coppinger.<\/p>\n
Thomas has been a fixture in the combat sports media scene for 20 years from Bloody Elbow to CBS Sports to his Morning Kombat podcast. Coppinger has covered combat sports for years with stints at Fox Sports and ESPN. In 2025, he moved to The Ring Magazine and DAZN.<\/p>\n
In 2024, The Ring magazine became another instrument of the Saudi sportswashing campaign. It was purchased by Turki Alalshikh<\/a>, the Chairman of the General Entertainment Authority of Saudi Arabia. Alalshikh is also the co-founder of Zuffa Boxing along with Dana White under the TKO umbrella.<\/p>\n The boxing world is known for complicated webs of entanglement and things not exactly being on the up-and-up in the sport throughout the generations. But the conflicts of interest in one of the sport\u2019s major promoters also controlling one of its most widely-read outlets hits you in the face like a Joe Frazier left hook.<\/p>\n For instance, there is the story from just a couple weeks ago of veteran boxing promoter Frank Warren threatening a $1 billion lawsuit<\/a> against Zuffa and a Saudi entertainment company for breach of contract. The Ring then put an unsourced message out on social media that Warren\u2019s company was in financial trouble and taking digs at his Queensberry Promotions. As Thomas pointed out, it amounted to sheer propaganda from Turki Alalshikh through his own publication.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s Turki responding to Frank Warren pushed through The Ring \ud83d\udc47 https:\/\/t.co\/QnrC1tcQ8u<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Luke Thomas\ud83c\udfcb\ufe0f\u200d\u2640\ufe0f (@lthomasnews) February 25, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n On Thursday, Thomas took another shot at\u00a0The Ring in a post quoting its owner taunting another rival promoter in Eddie Hearn. That led to Mike Coppinger jumping in to defend his current employer in calling out Thomas. Coppinger said nobody takes him seriously and he was cosplaying as \u201cthe authority on ethics.\u201d<\/p>\n And who takes you seriously? All you seem to do is sit on a high horse of moral superiority. Easy enough, I suppose, to cosplay as the authority on ethics when it\u2019s what you\u2019re best known for<\/p>\n \u2014 Mike Coppinger (@MikeCoppinger) March 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n Well, that tweet was enough to elicit a video response from Luke Thomas and it may be the most fiery sports media rant since Stephen A. Smith unloaded a 40 minute takedown of Jason Whitlock<\/a> on his podcast.<\/p>\n As Thomas addressed Coppinger, he said, \u201cB*tch, I\u2019m about to dunk on you in ways that your f\u2014ing grandchildren are gonna feel.\u201d<\/p>\n He wasn\u2019t lying.<\/p>\n pic.twitter.com\/45FAiXIsFF<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Luke Thomas\ud83c\udfcb\ufe0f\u200d\u2640\ufe0f (@lthomasnews) March 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cMike, look at me brother. Do you think you have these jobs because you are good at them? Is that what you think\u2026 Do you think you sit on that panel because you are good at this? Do you think that you get scoops because you do intrepid reporting in an honest way? Which, by the way, half of the things you report are wrong and they have to get corrected by other folks in the industry, not limited to Dan Rafeal but many others. Do you think you have these jobs because you earned them? You got these jobs because you\u2019re the biggest c\u2014sucker of power in combat sports,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re everything that\u2019s wrong with the profession. You\u2019re the avatar of the failure of sports journalism. You, brother, you take marching orders and do the bidding of a guy who works for MBS. You work for a theocratic f\u2014ing monarchy. Who the f\u2014 do you think you are, brother? You think you get these jobs because you\u2019re good at them? You get these jobs because you swallow the balls of people in power. You are useful to powerful people because you are a f\u2014ing idiot stooge. That is why. You are the walking embodiment of the rot within this industry.\u201d<\/p>\n And he wasn\u2019t done. Some of the other haymakers that Luke Thomas threw the way of Mike Coppinger in the seven-minute rant included the following:<\/p>\n \u201cIf he\u2019s [Max Kellerman] Howard Stern, you\u2019re Beetlejuice. You\u2019re the sideshow they let on there because they need somebody who has no beliefs in anything other than you gotta suck the d*ck and balls of power as vociferously as possible to get ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShut your f\u2014ing mouth. You are an untalented zero. You can\u2019t write for s\u2014, you\u2019re a mush-mouthed nothing, and by the way I know about some of your Showtime tryouts that you f\u2014ed up royally. You\u2019re bad at this. You\u2019re bad at all of it. You\u2019re good at one thing. One. You are a motherf\u2014ing cowardly b*tch @$$ d*cksucking stooge to the worst f\u2014ing malevolent actors in all of sports.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have a career on talent, you don\u2019t have a career on merit. You have a career on prostitution. That\u2019s what you are. You\u2019re a whore.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t know what it meant to act ethically if your life depended on it.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s the founding of LIV Golf, or even social media ads from Fabrizio Romano<\/a>, the Saudi sportswashing effort has extended far and wide<\/a> across all of sports. The pinnacle of these efforts will be the hosting of the 2034 FIFA World Cup. But through their relationships with TKO as the host of WrestleMania<\/a> and the launch of Zuffa Boxing, they have arguably been the most successful in the combat sports world.<\/p>\n And in truth, anyone who works for\u00a0The Ring\u00a0or partners with the Saudi effort has to acknowledge and wear that no matter if it\u2019s Arlo White calling LIV Golf or Max Kellerman working with Zuffa. Maybe nobody has addressed it in the sports world in quite the direct and aggressive way that Luke Thomas did. And the shocking nature of the personal shots at Mike Coppinger in such a vicious takedown make it seem like there\u2019s some bad blood that runs pretty deep there.<\/p>\n But the reality that cannot be denied is that these sports journalists are all working for the same regime that sponsored the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi and are engaged in propaganda work for them. And it\u2019s a choice they are all going to have to live with.<\/p>\n \t