Two-time World Champion Amir Khan recently wrapped up the ‘Amir Khan Crypto Fight Night’ at Dubai’s La Perle in association with India’s inaugural professional boxing league Super Boxing League (SBL). This was the a coming together of the world’s fastest-growing crypto community with the world’s oldest combat sport.

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“We are the first combat sports promoters to leap into the crypto space. The thought behind this was primarily to help build the sport among business-minded millennials,” Bill Dosanjh, founder of SBL, told Opoyi. “Blockchain is the new move across financial markets globally. The world of sports has made a significant entry into the cryptocurrency space,” he added.

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An Indian by birth, Dosanjh is a British businessman settled in Dubai. He manages investments in leisure and sports, hospitality, and entertainment. A combat sports enthusiast, he belongs to a family with a pedigree in wrestling. With Bruce Lee as his idol, Dosanjh has trained in karate, boxing, and mixed martial arts (MMA). 

Alongside close friend and business partner, British Asian professional boxer and Olympic silver medalist Amir Khan, Dosanjh launched “Khan Promotions” in the US in 2010. He was pivotal in launching Khan’s career that same year. 

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In 2012, Dosanjh founded the Super Fight League (SFL) in India, dedicated to the sport of MMA in singular fight night format. With the massive response received, Dosanjh hosted SFL in the USA, Middle East and Asia. But he wanted to do something different each year, something very different from other MMA promotions. That’s why the whole team format came up in 2015.

In 2017, SFL was rebranded and re introduced in India in an MMA sports league format, with key Bollywood celebrities association. The Super Boxing League (SBL), launched in 2017, in India, is a boxing league on the same lines as the SFL. SBL hosted a season on home turf with key Bollywood association, then travelled to Jeddah and then to Dubai and earned the title of becoming the first combat sports league to introduce boxing in the Middle East.

SFL and SBL nurture talent at the grassroots level while creating a stronger mainstream following. Dosanjh is also optimistic about a pay-per-view culture.

“When we launched Amir in Madison Square Garden back in 2010, we realized that though boxing has been around for centuries, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) today is the fastest growing sport globally and is garnering phenomenal pay-per-view numbers.”

Every high school in America offers wrestling. So it is kind of built into the US ecosystem, “where a boxer has to step outside a school and find a boxing gym, while wrestling is offered on campus. It’s been breeding for years. And that’s why you see so much talent available,” he added.

Dosanjh said this could work really well in India, because “India’s sport at the grassroots, other than cricket, is actually ‘kushti’. Every village has an ‘akhara’. So I thought this sport really has the opportunity to grow in India and I launched SFL back in 2012.” After seeing the success of SFL, he decided to replicate the model in boxing, and launched the SBL.

“Today we see Jake Paul, Logan Paul, and more getting into the fight space. In India, I definitely see a lot of Bollywood interest in combat sports.  This trend is definitely going to  scale up. One  bout I personally would love to watch is Tiger Shroff vs Vidyut Jammwal,” Dosanjh pointed out.

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He has big plans for both formats in India. “We aim to host the SFL League next year. For SBL, we plan to host the most anticipated and the hottest bout, Amir Khan vs Neeraj Goyat,” Dosanjh said.

On the prospects of boxing as a sport in India, he said, “India has good talent. We just need to guide them, support them with proper infrastructure, and then get them opportunities to participate in competitions globally.”